Goals

My journey as a professor, as a teacher and a mentor, has been like the Beatles' proverbial long and winding road. I like to think I've come a long way from that first August when I sat with my doctoral advisor reviewing students evaluations from my first course as the instructor of record. Open-ended comments included statements like, "Doesn't like white men," and "doesn't like white women," and (to my shock) "hates black men." I asked my chair, "Who do I like? Only black women?" He was kind about it. And instructive. I learned how to let my agenda shape who I am as a teacher and not who I want my students to be as students. Psychologists often include as part of their pedagogy the desire to craft more critical consumers of information from their students. I think this is true. We don't want to create acolytes in our image (mostly). I tell my students that it's not my job to teach them what to think but how to think.

As a methodologist, I process all curricula through this lens, but I also believe that this instruction gives students more than a critical thinking toolbox. The transactional nature of our cognitive development will, I'm convinced, provide them with a truer moral compass as well. Which is why I approach all courses from an intersectional perspective with a class, race, and sex framework through which students gain a richer understanding of core concepts. As an applied social psychologist, I'll admit to a certain level of cunning in doing so, for I also embed community-based research in several of these courses. I want my students getting dirty with the work of their worlds, and I plan for them to know what they're doing when they go about it.