School name:  University of California, Riverside

Type of school:  Public, large-enrollment, research-focused (R1), Hispanic- and Asian American & Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (HSI & AANAPISI)

School locale (including state and country):  Riverside, California, USA

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)?  In-person (though most of my classes are offered hybrid as well, and I occasionally teach an asynchronous course in the summer)

How many years have you taught psychology?  10 total, 8 as instructor of record

Classes you teach:  Introduction to Psychology, Psychological Methods: Statistical Procedures, Perception, Psychology of Creativity, Introduction to Quantitative Methods in Psychology (graduate level), Professional Development for Graduate Students (aka “how to get a job”)

Specialization (if applicable): e.g. clinical, cognitive, teaching, etc.
Cognitive, Teaching

What size classes do you teach?  Smallest: 10-15 PhD students; Largest: 585 undergraduates; & everything in between!

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?  It takes about 3 times teaching the class before you’re remotely “satisfied” with it. So just let it ride and see how things go the first couple of times—you can (and will!) always revise your class to be better in the future!

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out?  Desirable difficulties in theory and in practice (Bjork & Bjork, 2020). There is reference to earlier work on desirable difficulties that I recommend reading as well!  

Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (2020). Desirable difficulties in theory and practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 9(4), 475-479. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.09.003

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting?  That it’s okay to not implement everything you know about effective teaching right away! It’s great to aspire to all of these great ideas we read about and see our colleagues implementing, but they take a HUGE amount of work to create and implement effectively. It’s okay to take things slow—you’ll get your class there.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.  I think my favorite course to teach is statistics, since students often approach it with a sense of apprehension and dread. I like to convince them that it’s not so bad after all, and is a desirable skill to have regardless of where they go after their time in undergraduate.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.  I’ve done an activity I found online a few times related to sampling distributions of the mean. I have students bring in a handful of coins and we create a distribution of the years on each coin (usually a lot of more recent coins, but with a long tail toward much older coins). We then calculate the averages of each student’s set of coins and graph those averages to start building a sampling distribution of the mean. This shows students what this theoretical distribution is in a more tangible way and helps them understand the difference between a sample distribution and a sampling distribution (though it’s still quite a confusing concept!).

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it?  I am planning this course right now--a Teaching of Psychology course for PhD students looking to be instructor of record for their own class.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?  I use the acronym CREATE to describe my teaching philosophy—I could explain much more about each one, but in the spirit of the prompt, I’ll leave them as they are:

Collaborative, Relatable, Engaging, Assess (appropriately), Test (often), Encouraging

What’s your workspace like?  Organized chaos. Everything is in its place (which makes things easy to find), but the places that things are in are perhaps not the most organized or optimized. I have dreams of fixing up my office (and home office) to be neater and more aesthetically pleasing, but I can’t motivate myself to do it until things are disastrously messy.

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching?  I am currently trying to find ways to effectively implement alternative grading (e.g., specifications grading, ungrading) in large lecture classes. I am motivated to understand whether it can be done effectively, and whether the effort is worth it in terms of improving students’ achievement of learning outcomes and their overall experience in the course.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.  When I tried specifications grading in statistics, I set the specifications for the final exam a bit too high, and ended up with many students who would have earned grades far lower than is typical. There were a bunch of (justifiably) angry emails when I released the scores! But I took in the feedback, admitted that I had made a mistake (professors are humans too, after all!) and adjusted the cutoff and final grades accordingly. As a sidenote: happy to chat and share my experiences (good and bad) with anyone who is interested in trying out specs grading—it’s not for the faint of heart!

Tell us about a teaching “win” you’ve had and the context in which it happened.  When I implemented an ungrading approach in Perception, I had students submit final portfolios of their work where they could demonstrate their achievement of the course learning objectives. They also answered reflective questions about their experience in the course, what new things they learned, whether they shared those things with friends/family, etc. Seeing them demonstrate their learning in this way allowed me a much more intimate peek than I typically get with typical exams. It was so inspiring to see them relate the content to their lives and be excited about sharing their newfound knowledge with others.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?  I hold a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?  I am re-reading the first four books of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson in anticipation of book 5 (Wind and Truth) coming out at the end of the year.

What tech tool could you not live without?  Email on my phone. I know, I know, it facilitates poor work-life balance… but I have to know if someone has tried to reach me!

School name: School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast

Type of school: Higher Education institute

School locale (including state and country): Belfast, Northern Ireland

How many years have you taught psychology? I taught psychology and research methods/statistics at Belfast Metropolitan College from 2016 until last year. I was appointed as a Lecturer (Education) at Queen’s University Belfast in 2020.

Classes you teach: I teach Developmental psychology to first year students. I also teach mathematical cognition and thesis writing classes to final year students.

Specialization (if applicable): My PhD was in developmental psychology, specifically within the area of mathematical development.

Average class size: 120

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? The best advice about teaching that I have ever received is simply ‘take your time’. This is a piece of advice I received when attending a teaching course as a PhD student. This really has been pivotal in helping to shape my approach to teaching ever since, and students now comment in their evaluations of my teaching that the classes don’t feel as if they are rushed.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Hidalgo, G. I., Sánchez-Carracedo, F., & Romero-Portillo, D. (2021). Covid-19 emergency remote teaching opinions and academic performance of undergraduate students: Analysis of 4 students’ profiles. A case study. Mathematics, 9(17), 2147. https://doi.org/10.3390/math9172147

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.  I enjoy teaching my final year module on numerical development. In particular, I enjoy teaching about different theories which seek to explain how children acquire numeracy skills during the early years of schooling. In developmental psychology, I also enjoy teaching about emotional development and the development of children’s delay of gratification abilities as I did work in this area during my time as a Research Assistant.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I ask students in the first class of the mathematical cognition module to contribute to a word cloud on what words come to mind when they think about numeracy. I ask them to do the same thing during the fifth class, and I post both word clouds on Canvas so that they can see their own learning development on the topic within a short space of time.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I like to incorporate technology into my teaching in order to enhance student engagement during lectures. For example, asking for responses to questions via Padlet, demonstrating research to students using Qualtrics, and asking quiz questions on topics covered during the lecture using Mentimeter.

What’s your workspace like? I try to keep my office at the school as tidy as possible. It’s quite minimalist, with no ornaments or pictures! I do have a magnetic dartboard which a colleague/friend of mine bought me when I was appointed as a Lecturer. My home office is quite the opposite! I have a lot of stuff in there, including an electric drumkit for stress relief.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. These three words have been used by students in their evaluations of my teaching over the years: engaging, approachable, and organized.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Explaining difficult concepts in understandable and relatable terms.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I taught in an unfamiliar room early last year, and midway through the lecture, the microphone started to sound very robotic and made it seem like I was talking like C3P0! I changed the microphone, and then five minutes later, the same thing happened again. The students were in fits of laughter!

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? As someone who went to university late, I particularly love to see mature students, who are going to university to try to better themselves, do well on the course. I especially love to see their development over the course of the degree programme: from being nervous about returning to education, to flourishing in their final year.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I think students would be surprised to know that am a huge fan of darts, and I play in a darts team in my spare time.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? USA 94: The World Cup that changed the game by Matthew Evans

What tech tool could you not live without? My handheld PowerPoint slide clicker – without it, I’d not be able to move when teaching!

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Our school is very friendly, and when I run into colleagues, we usually spend a few minutes talking about work-related issues. Different colleagues will engage in conversations about different non-work-related things such as football, food, and TV shows.

School name: Drew University

Type of school: Private, liberal arts university

School locale (including state and country): Madison, NJ

How many years have you taught psychology? 4.5 years as a professor

Classes you teach: Introduction to Psychology; Abnormal Psychology; Attachment & Relationships; Seminar: Evidence-Based Psychotherapies; Seminar: Culture & Psychopathology

Specialization: Clinical Psychology

Average class size: 24-35 per section

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?  What has shaped my teaching has not been any specific advice but more so what I have personally experienced. I have been very lucky to have amazing mentorship throughout my university and graduate experiences. I was blessed with amazing female advisors/mentors/heroes for my time at Drew as an undergrad and my time at the University of Kansas for my PhD. Those incredible people showed me in action the difference one person can make in someone else’s life when they take time to guide, shape, and support their academic growth. I would not be the person I am today without those amazing mentors. My goal as a professor is to offer even half of that to students I advise.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.  I have been lucky to create some courses based on my specialized areas of clinical interests. One of my favorites, which seems to be popular with students as well, is my special topics course Attachment and Relationships. The course is centered around attachment theory. We explore research data on how the quality of early attachment bonds influence the people we become and how our interactions with early caregivers create the blueprint of how we tend to approach intimate relationships going forward. It is a fun course to teach because attachment influences so much of our life experiences, and it is very relatable content. I love seeing my students making connections both across other courses and in their personal lives. My favorite moments have been with some students who decided to pursue postgraduate studies in Family and Marriage Counseling who cite the course as part of their inspiration.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.  One of my favorite assignments is a paper I assign in Abnormal Psychology that requires students to use the information they have learned throughout the semester to complete an informal case conceptualization of a fictional character from a work of literature or film with an identifiable mental illness. It is a great practice for exploring the nuances of diagnoses, comorbidity, precipitating factors, perpetuating factors, etc.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?  I incorporate a lot of humor, mnemonics (“If I ever saw a hippo on campus, I would remember that for a long-time…”) visual media, and real-life examples in my teaching. Students have expressed appreciation for how taking my time to show them how to apply the concepts to their real lives helped solidify their learning.

What’s your workspace like?  My campus office decoration theme is Hogwarts. The book series has been a favorite since childhood, so I have a lot of items in my office inspired by that. It is especially cool because I remember, when I first stepped on Drew’s campus as a prospective student many years ago, I was struck by the absolute beauty of the campus, and it reminded me a lot of Hogwarts. My office also has several cherished thank you cards and other tokens from students who have now graduated.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.  Challenging, Attainable, and Relevant.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?  High expectations and high support

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.  I once had one of those moments that happen in nightmares the night before the semester starts. I accidentally wore two very different shoes to teach one day (don’t ask how…)! I did not realize it at all until after my first section was wrapping up. I asked my students if they had noticed and they responded yes, but that they thought it was intentional. We had a great laugh about it, and I quickly let them know I am nowhere cool enough to think I could pull off deliberately wearing two different shoes.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? Easily the student connections. It is amazing to just be doing something that comes naturally to me (e.g., helping students understand a concept better in office hours or post baccalaureate career exploration) and to receive a special thank you note from a student that shows me how much that simple thing actually meant to them.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Students seem pleasantly surprised when they learn that I am creative and that I have a business for those creative ventures.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?  Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum.

What tech tool could you not live without? Honestly, my phone. I always say that if it’s not in my phone calendar, it does not exist because I will forget about it. I survive with the reminders and alerts I have set up.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?  My conversations with my colleagues are a mixture of processing our teaching lives, problem-solving any ongoing issues, and us discussing our personal lives and interests.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how?  I think academia is still recovering from the pandemic in many ways. Students often struggle with what going back to “normal” means in terms of deadlines and standards when extreme flexibility was more common in their high school or early college years due to the crisis. Professors are trying to come to terms with social challenges to the value of higher education (and the debt associated for many students) and teaching in a much different technological world with the ongoing advances in ChatGPT and other related AI software.

School name: Delaware State University (DSU or DelState)

Type of school: HBCU

School locale (including state and country): Dover, Delaware, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? Since graduating from East Carolina University’s PhD program, I have been teaching full-time for nine years!

Classes you teach: Most of the classes I teach are traditional, in-person courses. Introduction to General Psychology, Honors Introduction to General Psychology, Health Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Principles of Psychopathology, Psychology of Learning, Senior Research Seminar.

Specialization: My doctoral degree is in Health Psychology with a specialization in Pediatric School Psychology.

Average class size: 30 to 35 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? At ECU, I had the honor to take courses about teaching as a graduate student and one piece of advice that I have implemented ever since is to structure class time in 10 to 20-minute chunks to hold students’ attention and foster engagement (e.g., in a 50-minute class: lecture, group work, lecture, video clip, lecture, review).

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? 

• Keeley, J., Afful., S. E., Stiegler-Balfour, J. J., Good, J. J., & Leder. S. (2013). So you landed a job – What’s next? Advice for early career psychologists from early career psychologists. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology web site.
• Hogan, K.A. & Sathy, V. (2022). Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom. West Virginia University Press.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. It is so hard to choose! I will narrow it down to two. I really like teaching students about parts of the brain. Students like it because we do a lot of drawings and hands-on activities like making neurons out of pipe cleaners and drawing the lobes on each other while wearing shower caps. Another favorite of mine is on operant conditioning principles of +R, -R, +P, and -P. With a background in Applied Behavior Analysis, I enjoy teaching students about the differences and similarities among punishment and reinforcement techniques. In groups, students are asked to give examples of how to utilize these principles in their professional careers (e.g., teach a class of noisy ballet dancers) and personal lives (e.g., deal with a messy roommate).

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I introduce an activity called Speed Meeting on the first day of class to get to know each other. Students write down certain facts on an index card. Then, we go out in the hallway and make two lines. Students have a partner and talk to that partner about what they wrote down on the card for about 1 minute. Then, after the timer sounds, one line moves down so each student has a different partner. We rotate two or three more times. I bring it back as a review activity throughout the semester.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? There are so many to talk about! From my most recent course evaluations and written feedback, I believe that the teaching and learning techniques that are working for my students include learning each of my student’s names, holding students accountable for coming to class by taking daily attendance, providing skeletal notes, using Power Points for lecture, doing sample test questions, reviewing content learned at each class session, and providing time in class to engage in group work.

What’s your workspace like? Since the pandemic, my daughter, husband and I have developed into plant parents. My office is home to a variety of plants: jade (crassula ovata), spider (chlorophytum comosum), snake (dracaena trifadciata), fantasy venice (tradescantia nanouk), and mother of millions (kalanchoe delagoensis). Our home office has a lot more! I also have a standing desk with two screens, a couch, and filing cabinets decorated with magnets from places traveled or activities that make me smile.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.  I want to share the most frequently-used words from last semester’s course evaluations and student feedback because they validate what I want to accomplish in the classroom! Welcoming, Interactive, and Engaging.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Encouraging mutual learning through support, relevance, and kindness.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. There are countless times when I planned activities and they have fallen flat! One of them early in my career was when I was a graduate assistant for an Introduction to Psychology class with 100+ students and prepared a game to do as a review which utilized Glee (yes, I was a Gleek!) cards. I assigned different Glee character cards as certain letters which coordinated with different questions. I did not write down what cards matched with what letter, so everyone got confused! I learned that I needed to try out different activities with friends or loved ones before implementing them in the classroom.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? In terms of the quality of life as an instructor, I love the schedule of being a professor. Having breaks throughout the year as well as summers off helps with spending time with my daughter, husband, and family. I also love how each semester is a fresh start for students and faculty and staff. I like that I can make changes to a course and modify techniques based on feedback and outcomes. I also love how each academic year is filled with excitement about coming to college and then graduating from college! I truly enjoy helping students with their own career trajectories, discussing the many opportunities available to them, and the people/departments/resources in college that can support them towards their goals. I hold first-generation college students and students with children especially dear to my heart.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I am an ovarian cancer survivor. I was diagnosed in summer 2019 and continued teaching after a radical hysterectomy and throughout chemotherapy. I received tenure in 2020 as an associate professor at Wesley College. When it was acquired by DSU, I lost status and tenure. I was Visiting Assistant Professor during a probationary period and just recently transitioned to tenure-track Assistant Professor. I discuss teaching through cancer and other aspects of my career in a recent article in the Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? For me, Murder and Mamon by Mia P. Manansala (Book 4 of the A Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery). With my daughter, Maybe Maybe Marisol Rainey by Erin Entrada Kelly. Filipina authors write these books, and I heard about them from being a member of the Filipinx Author Book Club. I am so inspired by the authors who talk about their journeys that I am taking classes to write my own middle grade novel!

What tech tool could you not live without? As a professor, there are several tools that I need to make my days less stressful including Outlook, Google Calendar, Color Note, Power Point, etc. Before 2022, I would have probably said my flash drive(s), then I bought an expensive one which stopped working and I switched to One Drive and Google Drive.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most (whether or not it is related to teaching/school)? Very often it is about technology issues that we are experiencing in our classrooms! Other topics include when meetings and parties are as well as student issues (the good, the bad, and the ugly).

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? I make sure to emphasize social support and add in readings to help students feel that they are not alone in their academic journeys. To this end, I also find myself disclosing more about myself. Notably, when discussing social support through community service, I tell my students about volunteering for a nonprofit, Pursuit for Peace, which is an organization with volunteers who dress up as princesses and visit medically vulnerable populations. In terms of assignments, I remember a talk from ACT 2022 about bending not breaking the rules/standards. I implement more grace periods for late work as well as drops for assignments and quizzes. I also make sure to emphasize the importance of in-person interactions and oral presentations.

School name: Casper College

Type of school: Community College

School locale (including state and country): Casper, WY, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? 11 years

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Human Sexuality, Research Methods, Sports Psychology, Research Methods, Marriage and Family, Biological Psychology.

Specialization: Teaching, Minority Stress, Humane Education

Average class size: 20

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? It wasn’t said directly to me by the person, but is a quote we refer to often in Chabad. “Imagine you could open your eyes to see only the good in every person, the positive in every circumstance, and the opportunity in every challenge” by Rebbe M. Schneerson. I keep this above my desk because following this advice makes me the best teacher for my students and myself.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Our Babies, Our Selves by Meredith Small. It changed how I felt about children and raising children, which led me to become a teacher and a psychology instructor. While it is about raising children in different cultures, it helped shape my views about relating to students of all ages.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Marriage and Family is my favorite class to teach because it includes many of my favorite topics. I love seeing my students learn that the purpose of marriage has drastically changed over time, despite their belief that marriage was always about finding “the one.”

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I love having students read short stories to connect ideas. My favorite assignment is reading Flowers for Algernon to discuss intelligence. My students also love this assignment. Using the stories turns the topic of measuring and thinking about intelligence from dry to full of emotion.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? Ungrading has been successful for me. My students feel more free to try new things and to participate more because they are not worried about their grades.

Mixing small activities into lectures makes the class more fun. When we use a short activity for discussion, and then I fill in additional notes, the students are more engaged in the class and the topic.

What’s your workspace like? My office is full of work completed by my students and gifts given to me by students and classes. There is always a stack of books on my desk that I want to read. I keep candy on my desk. There is also a Nespresso machine for keeping me caffeinated and when students need a longer discussion with me.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Flexible, fun, hands-on.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Create life-long learners, not memorizers.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I can’t think of a specific instance, but I have definitely had assignments that didn’t go the way I planned. I don’t get embarrassed. I admit to students that things are not going as planned, and we need to scrap it and do something different. I think they appreciate the honesty and not having to keep doing something that clearly isn’t working.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? The students. I always enjoy getting to know them, hearing their views, and laughing with them in class. I look forward to going to work every day because it is like seeing my friends. 

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I share so many personal stories as part of my teaching. I don’t know if they would be surprised by anything.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Madame Restell by Jennifer Wright

What tech tool could you not live without? This is old school, but a video projector. I don’t use a lot of tech in my classes, so I could get rid of what I do use pretty easily, but I rely a lot on videos and movies.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/or negative changes) Most of our chatter is just stories about our day or our lives. Sometimes, we discuss issues we are having and ask for an opinion. In my building, we mostly have a lot of fun and laughter in the hallway. I don’t think my teaching has changed due to Covid, but I think students have changed, and not for the better. Students seem more needy (I don’t love that word, but can’t think of a better one). But the neediness seems to come from a lack of effort on their part. I have found being back in the classroom post Covid quite frustrating at times.

 School name: Highline College (emerita) and New Mexico State University (NMSU; affiliate faculty)

Type of school: Highline College is a community college. NMSU is an R2 Hispanic Serving institution.

School locale (including state and country): Highline is in Des Moines, Washington, US. NMSU is in Las Cruces, New Mexico, US.

How many years have you taught psychology? The first class I taught entirely on my own was 33 years ago when I was in grad school.

My first full-time teaching job was at New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, a two-year branch. I left there in 2001 to go to work for Highline College, located just south of Seattle. In 2021, we moved back to Las Cruces, NM, home to NMSU’s main campus. I teach Intro Psych for NMSU when it fits my schedule. My retirement from Highline will be official in September 2023.

Classes you teach: Intro to Psychology, Social Psychology, and Research Methods. I have taught many others, but these have been my courses for the last several years.

Average class size: At Highline, my online classes averaged 30 students. At NMSU, my face-to-face classes cap at 80.

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? “If I don’t have at least one negative student course evaluation, then I haven’t been doing my job.” This was uttered by a Political Science professor. He explained that he wanted to challenge students. If at least one student didn’t complain about the course content or the work in the course, then he didn’t feel like he was challenging his students enough. I don’t know that I have fully embraced his thinking, but it has kept me from obsessing over those occasional negative evaluations in a sea of positive ones.

“Students have a right to fail.” This was an academic counselor speaking at a faculty meeting. She said that while she knew that many of us bent over backwards to help students succeed, she reminded us that students have to take responsibility for their own learning. Students have to meet us at least halfway. When students would come to her office and start talking about their struggles in a particular course, her first question to them was, “Are you reading the textbook?” If the answer was no, she would say, “We’re done. Read the textbook. If you’re still struggling after that, then come back and see me.” After hearing this, I stopped taking sole responsibility for my students who did poorly in the course.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? What had the greatest impact on me as a teacher didn’t come from a book. It came from a rock musician. When I started my teaching career my greatest weakness was in public speaking. I had been to a number of Melissa Etheridge concerts and I was struck by how she could hold an audience’s attention, so I started paying attention to what she did. Even though she was speaking to an audience of a few thousand, her style was conversational. Other performers maintain the actor’s fourth wall, the wall between the performance and the audience; I’ve seen instructors do the same thing. In her concerts, that wall is non-existent. I figured if she can be conversational in her style, so can I, and I even have an advantage! With my class sizes, my students can converse back. Although there is one technique Etheridge employs that does allow the audience to converse with her: Call and response. I sprinkle this in wherever I can. I say something, and the students respond as a class. For example, after covering the neuron, this is how I conclude my lecture.

Me: What are the chemical messengers called?
Class: Neurotransmitters!
Me: They float across the empty space called the…?
Class: Synapse!

Etc.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. Introduction to Psychology is my favorite course to teach, because I love the challenge of covering such a large number of topics. Most of us receive graduate training in one area, and then have to bring ourselves up to speed on the rest of the course content, and I am no exception. I like to think of the Intro Psych course as an owner’s manual for the human mind. We explore how everything works and then end the course talking about troubleshooting. What happens when things don’t quite work as they should? And what can we do about that?

There is no other course in the psychology curriculum that has the impact Intro has. The vast majority of students who take Intro are not destined to be psychology majors. They will major in other fields, and then go on to work in industry, business, medicine, law, etc. Intro Psych is our one opportunity to help future leaders and decision makers grasp how important the field of psychology is.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I am a big fan of interteaching because it puts the responsibility for learning back into the hands of the students. I’ve written blog posts about it, such as this one from 2019. Garth Neufeld and I did a webinar on interteaching in 2023; watch the free recording here.

What’s your workspace like? The photograph above my desk is White Sands National Park located 50 miles from where I live. Here in the Mesilla Valley of southern New Mexico, chile peppers are a big part of our agricultural economy. The plants by the window are chile peppers, and outside a ristra, a decorative hanging made of dried red peppers.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Students are responsible for their own learning.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. In class, a student asked a question. As I was answering it, I was reminded of a video I had seen that would help illustrate my point. I did a quick search of YouTube and started playing the video. It was the wrong video. The video I was showing was an offensive parody of the one that I had wanted. I quickly stopped it, said something like, “That was clearly the wrong one,” did a more careful search, and finally played the right one.

The lesson? Just as trial lawyers are told to never ask a question of a witness in court that they don’t already know the answer to, the same holds for instructors playing videos in class. Don’t play a video unless you know what is in the video.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? The best part about teaching is helping students learn. There is nothing better than watching the light bulb come on.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I started using my own Intro Psych textbook for the first time this past January. Some of my students were surprised to learn that I was one of the authors.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished SPQR by Mary Beard. It’s a terrific history of the Roman Empire.

I’m now working my way through Stephen Spotswood’s Pentecost and Parker mysteries. I just started the second one in the series, Murder Under Her Skin.

What tech tool could you not live without? There are several, but with the amount of writing I’ve been doing, I could not live without Zotero. It’s a top notch pdf and reference manager.

What is your hallway chatter like? I work entirely from home, so most of my chatter is telling my dogs to stop barking.

BONUS LINKS: listen to Sue on the PsychSessions podcast!

GST001: Garth and Sue Talk...Season 1 Promotion/Premiere
E004: Sue Frantz: Knows a Thing or Two about Teaching Diverse Students
E158: Sue Frantz, Part 2: Innovator, Author, Technologist, Pedagogical Specialist

 

 

 

School name: University of Mary Washington (UMW)

Type of school: One of the rare public liberal arts colleges

School locale (including state and country): Fredericksburg, VA, USA

How many years have you taught psychology? This is my 19^th year of full-time teaching. I did some teaching prior to that as a grad student, but it wasn’t a key focus in my program.

Classes you teach: General Psychology, Research Methods, Social Psychology, Psychology of Women & Gender, Cultural Psychology, Health Psychology, Social Influence, Research Seminar in Social Psychology, Undergraduate Intern Supervision, First-year Seminar: Feminism in the 21^st Century

Specialization: My degree is in social psychology, and I have training in health psychology and the psychology of women and gender. As you can likely tell from the list of classes I teach, I consider myself a generalist, however.

Average class size: 20-25 students

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? I think the best general piece of advice was given to me when teaching my first class as instructor of record while in graduate school. I was finding it challenging to balance class prep, work on my dissertation, my TA responsibilities, and what little personal life I had. My supervisor urged me to try to limit my prep to 2 (and definitely no more than 3) hours per hour in the classroom. I didn’t always meet the goal that first semester, but I’ve become much better at it as the years have gone by. I’ll always wish I’d had more time, so sometimes good enough really will do.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? It is all but impossible to narrow this down to one, but I can point to me reading Intersectional Pedagogy: Complicating Identity and Social Justice, edited by Dr. Kim A. Case, as representing a turning point in how I approached my classes and my work with my students.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. While I have a soft spot for teaching research methods since it was a class I hated as an undergrad but later discovered a deep love of research, my favorite class has traditionally been psychology of women and gender. I typically only teach one section of this course every second year, so the wait may make me all the more excited for it when it happens. I love the seminar-style format and that students always make the class distinct from all those taught in prior semester. In a self-serving way, I also now like it because I get to use the textbook I co-authored for the class – inspired in large part by a desire to better serve students who take this course with me. This semester, I’m teaching cultural psychology – a new addition to our major – for the first time, and I think this course may given psych of women a run for its money as a favorite. Finally, my gender studies soul loves that every few years I get to teach a first-year seminar on feminism and step into interdisciplinary territory with a fairly non-psych-focused course.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity. I have lots of class activities I enjoy, but one of my favorites is when I teach about social influence in my social psych classes. At the end of the week, students work in small groups to evaluate a crowdfunding campaign (that is completed and clearly not endorsed by me) to identify the influence principles being employed. This helps them both see how common they are as well as how many different ways they can show up.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I tend to be eclectic in my approach to teaching. I really thrive with structure, so that comes through in both my course planning and execution. That said, I think many of my most successful classes are ones where I cede a lot of the content coverage and execution decisions to students who lead discussions, so the meetings become inherently unpredictable. I’ve found flipping my classes works wonderfully for some (e.g., my honors general psych course) but worked less well for others (i.e., my research methods course). I’ve developed a focus on oral communication in many of my classes, and I favor frequent, low-stakes assignments to reduce the speaking anxiety that is so common for many (including me).

What’s your workspace like? For me, this means my office on campus. All our offices are on the third floor of the building, and we generally have our office doors open so we’re aware of each other, can ask each other questions, can provide support to each other, etc. 

In my office, I have a large L-shaped desk against the window that looks out into a wooded area (when leaves are on the trees) or to the hills across the river (when there aren’t leaves). One part of my desk has my double monitors and laptop on a standing desk overlay (that I use far too little since it means I have to move the ring light that lets people actually see me during zoom meetings), and I always have a pad of paper – and usually some post-its – on top of my laptop. The other part of my desk generally has stacks of folders with notes to take to class or meetings, books for classes that semester, and books I’m trying to read “on my own time.”

I have pictures of family and former students around my office along with some fun toys on my bookshelves. I have a small folding table with my electric kettle and tea supplies, and a comfy chair in one corner I like to use when I’m reading.

I’ve set up my office so the desk isn’t between me and students when we’re meeting, and my office is open enough that groups of 3 (or 4 if I borrow a chair from down the hall) can easily meet with me at one time. And I have a large whiteboard on one wall which I use for brainstorming with students regularly.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Challenging, Skill-based, and Structured

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Helping students build skills for life-long success.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. I’ve been teaching for long enough that I have myriad options to draw from here, but I always find myself going back to the first class I ever had independent responsibility for – a small section of Introductory Statistics while I was in graduate school.

While I had taught individual topics before in a number of classes, I had never had full responsibility for planning and executing a class, and I spent many hours preparing before each class meeting. I no longer remember what topic we were covering, but it was clear two-thirds of the way through one class meeting that my students were lost. I was a novice enough teacher that I just kept powering through, but I knew that learning hadn’t really happened (at least for my students) that day. 

When we next met, I told the students to rip out the pages in their notebooks from our last meeting, and we started over with me covering things in a different way, at a different pace. It was a great reminder that the same approach won’t always work and that I needed to be flexible – something that doesn’t necessarily come easily to me

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? It’s the “aha” moments students get. When something starts to get stale or repetitive for me, this reminds me that it’s new to my students. One time it was the student who came to me crying at the end of a class focused on intersectionality because she was so moved by considering her own experiences of privilege. Another time, it was the Spanish major who took my health psych class to complete her speaking intensive courses gen ed requirement, discovered the field of public health, and went on to get a masters and work in that field. Sometimes it’s just the small moments of a student realizing that what we talked about that day reflects something they experienced that week. My students are why I do this, and while I can be frustrated by them at times, the moments like these remind me why this difficult job is worth it in the end.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? Other than inappropriate oversharing, I’m pretty open with my students, so I’m not really sure. I know some have been surprised to learn that I’m both a first-generation college student as well as a graduate of a college-prep boarding school. Some might be surprised to learn I own more than 300 board and card games (although given that I sometimes play games with colleagues in one of our open collaboration rooms over lunch, others wouldn’t be surprised at all). Most recently, many students in one of my classes were shocked to learn that, as a gender studies professor, I had yet to see the Barbie movie.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? Most of my pleasure reading happens during school breaks. I am, however, currently reading Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story by Jacob Tobia. Every semester, our Safe Zone program hosts a book club for faculty/staff, and Sissy is our focus this semester. I’ve found campus book clubs are a great way for me to read one or two books each semester while also being able to connect with people on campus with whom I might not otherwise interact much.

What tech tool could you not live without? I’m taking my computer, phone, dropbox, and zoom out of the equation for this one. Looking beyond those, this semester it’s ziplet. I’m teaching two sections of a completely new-to-me course and one section of a completely redesigned course, so frequent feedback is something I knew I wanted. This lets me set a digital “ticket out” to use at the end of each class meeting, and students can get to it with a QR code unique to each class (or a stable short URL if they struggle with the QR code). I’m enjoying what it allows me in terms of taking the temperature of the room, giving students a “safe” way to ask questions, or just asking silly questions from time to time. I now plan to keep using it in future semesters.

What is your hallway chatter like? What do you talk to colleagues about most? As is true for many, it sometimes involves venting frustrations about students and administrators. Most of the time, however, we’re chatting about our families, plans for the weekend, a book we’re reading, etc. We’re all open to sharing ideas, activities, and assignments, so sometimes we’re brainstorming how to approach things when one of us is struggling.

Has your teaching changed because of the Covid19 pandemic? If so, how?  One thing that immediately comes to mind is that I was reminded that I can do things outside of my comfort zone. I never wanted to teach online, but because of my own health and family-care responsibilities, I taught online for 1.5 years. Not everything I tried worked well, but I found a lot more success than I expected.

Another change is my comfort with making class-specific videos. This has led to me flipping two of my classes and making many narrated videos for things like using PsycINFO, SPSS, and Qualtrics that students can watch on their own time and refer back to as often as needed.

In terms of a negative change, I totally burned out. Between the extra effort of teaching online when I never had before, the added flexibility I tried to build in to meet student needs, and my own needing to deal with living in a global pandemic, I was stretched to the breaking point. That means the 22-23 academic year was the worst I had since starting to teach full-time. I largely took the summer off to give myself time to recharge, and I’m looking forward to my spring sabbatical, so this year is going far better!

School name: Rutgers University

Type of school: Research-driven (R1) urban university

School locale (including state and country): New Jersey, U.S.

How many years have you taught psychology? 5

Classes you teach: Social Psychology, Health Psychology

Specialization: social/health

Average class size: 15-25

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received? Oddly, the best advice about teaching (and learning) I received was from my high school chemistry teacher. He described struggling with chemistry in college although he loved the subject. When professors used to post non-anonymized grades, he realized he could not only see who the top performing students were but also learn from them. He waited for A-earning students to see their grades and asked them if he could study with them. He learned their habits and learned from them. At the time, he was spinning a tale about growth mindset, showing his students that they could grow over time with better strategies learned from others (something I also emphasize in my courses). Now, I’ve come to see this as an essential part of teaching as well. He was such a powerful teacher, one who could describe complex content in multiple engaging ways to maximize student understanding. It made me realize that struggling with material sometimes is normal, makes us stronger learners, and makes us better teachers because we’re better able to understand students struggling with the material and problem-solve with them.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?  Given the story above, it may be unsurprising that the research behind growth mindset has been probably the most pivotal in shaping my teaching philosophy, including Dr. Carol Dweck’s “Mindset”. I also get excited about evidence-based practice, so Dr. Paul Kirschner and colleagues’ work on myths in education and learning as well as how learning happens has also greatly informed my instruction. For years, I was an educational coach, and I preached learning styles not knowing that there is little to no evidence for them—ah!

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.  As a researcher in self-regulation (and a former educational coach and health coach), I really enjoy teaching about strategies students can use to meet their goals and improve their everyday lives. I love thinking that they can add healthier, research-based tools to their toolboxes to use during the class and after it’s over.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.  I love media, so most of my favorite in-class activities center around watching videos and dissecting them with students. I randomly watched PBS’s “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” with my parents in high school, which got me interested in health and social psychology, and I never looked back. I created a watch guide for the film with an accompanying assignment on students’ experience with stress for health psychology, and I really appreciate students’ responses to that assignment.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? I love a good discussion. I felt like I learned the most from discussions when I was in school, so I try my best to generate discussion questions (or use some of those provided by generous others) that can be fruitful for students. As an instructor, I love that discussions become a window into students’ experiences, which helps me to shape future questions, examples, or even different subjects.

What’s your workspace like? A work in progress! In the wake of the pandemic, I upgraded our office, adding a sit-to-stand desk, a second screen (joining the 21^st century), and some tall bookcases. I also added a small art wall above my desk of my embroidery work and small artwork I bought or was gifted over the years. Hoping all of these efforts increase my productivity as well as boost my mood.

Three words that best describe your teaching style. Positive, inclusive, active

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Evidence-based, student-centered, learning-focused

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. My first teaching experience was leading a statistics lab as an undergraduate junior. One week, instead of emailing the worksheet to students, I sent them the worksheet with the answers. I thought something felt off as students exchanged glances... I thought maybe these problems were too challenging or maybe too easy, and they were trying to say that without saying it. So, after 5 minutes (was it 10? It felt like FOREVER), I reminded them I was here to help as they worked through the practice problems. One brave student let me know I had sent them the answers. I was mortified, especially because I’d have to tell my supervising professor about my error.

I am pretty proud of my quick response, though. My immediate reaction was to swear them all to secrecy and ask them to tip toe out of the classroom like nothing happened. Then, I realized I did them a big disservice in providing the answers before they could work through the problems. So, I thanked the student, joked about the looks I had noticed, gave them all full credit, and explained how they could use that resource to their advantage by using it to check their answers rather than not doing the work at all. I asked everyone to stay for at least half the lab time so they could actually give themselves a chance to test their stats prowess—most actually stayed until the end and were grateful for seeing the answers step by step!

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable? I love seeing the light go on in students’ eyes when they connect with something. I know grading can be a drain, but some of my favorite teaching moments are reading reflections and noticing how each student relates to the content just a little differently.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? I’m not sure! I’m pretty transparent. I tell them my journey to teaching/academia is not linear, but I don’t go into a lot of detail about all the detours I took, like my brief stint as a belly dancer.

What are you currently reading for pleasure? I just finished the last book of the Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin as well as Atomic Habits this past week. I try to switch between a book related to my work and something fun, like sci-fi or fantasy. I think next is “Willpower doesn’t work” and “The end of Men”.

School name: Delaware Valley University

Type of school: Delval is known for being a school of agriculture

School locale (including state and country): Doylestown, PA

How many years have you taught psychology? I am beginning my 5^th year.

Classes you teach: Multicultural Issues in Counseling, Intro to Psych, Developmental Disabilities, Childhood Psychopathology, and Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

Specialization (if applicable): Health Psychology, Clinical and African American Psychology

Average class size: 34

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher? Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach. I have two favorite lecture topics: The Criminal Mind and Psychological Disorders 

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.  My favorite in class activity is the Dr. Bandura “Bobo the Clown “activity where I bring an inflatable clown into the class to demonstrate the experiment.  Most students are surprised to see me hitting an inflatable clown with a bat during class.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you? The teaching technique that works best for me is running an interactive class. I add a lot of questions through my presentation in order to make sure my students are engaged.

What’s your workspace like?  As an adjunct I carry everything I need with me during my class but I bring things such as a diffuser that turns different colors to make the classroom environment more welcoming.

Three words that best describe your teaching style.  Engaging, Controversial (in a good way), and Energetic

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer? Learning goes beyond the classroom.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation. During my first year of teaching I remember a lesson that I worked so hard on but it just wasn’t long enough and I had too much time left over. I was scrambling to think of things to do so I just free-styled. It was very awkward but I learned from that day on to always have a backup plan.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable?  I enjoy seeing that moment is a student’s reaction where you see the lightbulb go off and they really connect with the material.

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you? My students would be surprised to learn that although I seem to be extrovert during class, I am really an introvert and very shy.

School Name:      Norfolk State University

Type of School:     4-year Public Historically Black College/University (HBCU); NSU offers undergraduate, masters and doctoral degree programs.

School locale (including state and country):  Norfolk, Virginia, USA

How many years have you taught psychology?  I began teaching psychology as a graduate teaching assistant and have been teaching full-time since 2001.

Classes you teach:  Psychology Statistics, Experimental Psychology, Psychology Seminar (Senior Capstone); Quantitative Research Methods; Social Psychology

Specialization (if applicable): Social Psychology

Average class size:  30-35 students each semester

What’s the best advice about teaching you’ve ever received?  I don’t think my mother would agree that this was necessarily sage advice, but she was speaking from the perspective of a burnt-out public school teacher. She advised me not to become a public school teacher and focus my attention on earning my doctorate with the goal of becoming a university professor. I took her advice.

What book or article has shaped your work as a psychology teacher?

The novel Plum Bun: A novel without a moral, by Jessie Redmon Fauset shaped my work as a psychology instructor because it helped me to develop my psychology courses using a project-based methodology; something that I had always wanted to do. I developed assignments using the text of the novel, to teach social psychological concepts.  Although Plum Bum was written in 1929, Fauset discussed many issues that remain relevant today.  I was able to create lecture discussions and class activities around the novel’s premise specifically, issues related to gender, racial inequality, self-identify, and many other social psychological topics.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.

My favorite course to teach is psychology statistics. I enjoy teaching this course because it was the course that I most dreaded as an undergraduate student.  Working through the anxiety of completing my first statistics course was an important step for me as an undergraduate, and I enjoy sharing my experiences and knowledge with my students.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.

I can’t pick just one.  I most enjoy project and problem-based activities that require students to apply the content knowledge that they have learned. Participating in these types of activities fosters the comprehension of the material at a higher cognitive level.

What teaching and learning techniques work best for you?

I enjoy teaching using collaborative activities, demonstrations, and storytelling as a way to engage students with the course material.

What’s your work space like?  In addition to being a Professor, I am also the Department Chair; therefore, I have the largest office in the department. My office has a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows and a large desk that has built-in shelves, a bookcase, and file drawers.  It is very nice!

Three words that best describe your teaching style.  Three words that describe my teaching style are student-centered, collaborative, and problem-based.  However, I am a firm believer that no one teaching strategy will reach all students all of the time.  I regularly augment my teaching approach to reach the students that I am teaching at the time.

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?  

Maintaining high standards in a supportive learning environment.

Tell us about a teaching disaster (or embarrassment) you’ve had and how you dealt with the situation.

Early in my career, I primarily used publisher developed test bank questions to create my exams.  I did just that for my statistics class’s first exam.  I passed out the papers and approximately 5 minutes into the exam, a student came to my desk to inform me that the correct answers for each item were highlighted! The highlighting was faint but noticeable. I was mortified.  I thanked the student for her honesty and quickly notified the class that the exam was over.  I now write my own exams.

What about teaching do you find most enjoyable?

I enjoy seeing students achieve their “light bulb moment” when they finally grasp a concept that they have struggled with for weeks. 

What is something your students would be surprised to learn about you?

My students would be surprised to know that I continued to teach both online and in-person courses while undergoing daily dialysis for 3.5 years.  I also worked the morning of my kidney transplant surgery.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?  I must say that I have not done much pleasure reading as of late. Most of my reading has been work-related.  However, the last book that I read was Wild Rain, an African American historical romance novel written by Beverly Jenkins.  I especially enjoyed reading this book because the subtext of the novel includes (as do many of her novels) aspects of African American history that we are not taught in school.

What tech tool could you not live without?  Zoom.  Although we are post-COVID, I still conduct most of my meetings using this platform.

What is your hallway chatter like?  What do you talk to colleagues about most (Whether or not it is related to teaching/school)?

Office chatter has been pretty much non-existent since COVID. However, if I have to pick one thing that I commiserate with colleagues about it would have to be how to best engage students in learning how to write using proper APA style.   

Has your teaching changed because of the COVID 19 pandemic? If so, how? (positive and/ or negative changes).

Since COVID, I have had to be more lenient with deadlines.  I have also had to allow more grace and flexibility as it relates to assignment submissions. Often allowing students to resubmit after receiving feedback.