School name: Minnesota State University, Mankato

Type of school: regional comprehensive 4-year

School locale: Mankato, MN, USA 

Is your role mostly in-person, hybrid, online (synchronous or asynchronous)? Mostly in-person, though I have done and still do some online teaching

For how many years have you taught psychology? 22 years, 19 years post PhD

Classes you teach: Intro to Psych, Research Methods, Careers in Psychology, Social Psychology, Psychology and Law, Critical Thinking and Pseudoscience, History and Systems

Specialization: Social Psych

What size classes do you teach? Smaller ones range from 20 – 25 people, mid-size from 30 – 50 people, and Intro is taught to about 100 people per section.

What is a book, article, research, or author/researcher that you would recommend that new teachers check out? I really appreciate the work done on teaching Intro to Psych by the APA working group, and the book Transforming Introductory Psychology by Regan Gurung and Garth Neufeld is a wonderful combination of inspiring ideas and concrete examples to support changes in teaching Introduction to Psychology. I’ve used these ideas in my own teaching, particularly in emphasizing research as the foundation of the other content and ideas that I choose to include.

What do you know now about teaching that you wish you knew when you were starting?  When I was starting, I was really focused on covering content—I thought that if I’m not actively lecturing and making sure that everything in the textbook was included in class, then my students were ‘missing out’ on important information. Now, I focus so much more on active learning—I skip textbook chapters or leave out lecture content to make more room for student discussions, application, and other types of in-class projects. Students engage more directly with the key ideas of the course, and retain more information in the long run. It’s tough to admit but I know that my students can still learn a lot even if [especially if?] I’m not talking the whole time. I try to encourage graduate instructors and new faculty to focus in on key concepts, and to feel free to leave topics out when teaching undergraduate courses, giving students that time to practice and engage with course ideas.

Briefly tell us about your favorite lecture topic or course to teach.  I love teaching Social Psychology, both because that’s the field my PhD is in so I have a depth of knowledge about the theories and key studies in the field, but also because I think it’s so clearly relevant to our daily lives. Students can easily see examples of course ideas, such as the fundamental attribution error, in their own lives. I really enjoy helping students understand and apply the scientific method to testing their own assumptions and experiences, and sharing the creative ways researchers in social psychology have worked to scientifically measure and understand human behavior.

Briefly describe a favorite assignment or in-class activity.  I’ve created a project focused on examining a psychology-related misconceptions [such as the idea that the full moon influences our behavior]. Students work individually or in groups to write some survey questions to assess belief in the misconception they choose to focus on, and then we create a course survey that they distribute to their own networks. They also find empirical articles that tested the misconception, and create a final paper and presentation where they describe what they learned from the survey, and the research that has tested that misconception. Students build a lot of research skills and get really engaged in this project!

What’s your dream course if you had the time and resources to teach it?  I would love to design and teach a research course that is more focused on critiquing popular presentations of psychology in the media as well as on identifying pseudoscience, perhaps as a requirement for psychology minors who aren’t completing our department’s traditional statistics / research methods sequence. I think that focusing on this type of media literacy while building in an understanding and appreciation of the role of science would be so useful, not only to psychology students but students in many other majors. Though, these topics also mean that a course like this would need to be continually updated and revised, which definitely adds to the course preparation requirements.

What are three words that best describe your teaching style?   Enthusiastic, Questioning, Active

What is your teaching philosophy in 8 words or fewer?  Engaging students to appreciate science.

What’s your workspace like?  My office is full of carefully curated piles—I have a specific spot for each class I’m currently teaching, and each of my primary research projects. I easily forget what I’m doing if resources aren’t visible to me, so this helps me organize my main teaching and research materials where I can easily find what I need. Of course, I have tons of books, plenty of fun pens and markers, and all the post-its anyone could need—I think much better in analog, not digital. I have a memory of meeting with my undergraduate psychology advisor in his office with floor-to-ceiling stuffed bookshelves, and thinking, ‘being a professor seems like a pretty great job.’

What is something you are currently focused on improving or changing in your teaching?  I’m continually trying to balance flexibility with holding students accountable, and now the increasing use of AI tools is adding another wrinkle to that. I think that students can learn so much through regular, reflective writing assignments, but I’m reworking those to require specific description of course materials to encourage students to write these themselves, instead of using AI. I’m also being more rigorous in my expectations of class attendance and moving back towards more in-person teaching—I think this is useful both from a perspective of increasing social connections, and also ensuring that students are doing their work. But, balancing this with understanding that students’ lives are increasingly complex—they are working, they are caring for family members, they are commuting long distances to school, they are managing chronic illnesses, and that all students need support and flexibility to succeed, makes it tricky to design course policies and practices that are fair and accommodating. I appreciate reading about others’ teaching strategies as I keep honing my own approaches.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?  I read all kinds of things and am usually reading a few books at once—currently, I am reading a nonfiction book about the history of tap dancing [a favorite hobby of mine], and my fiction preferences tend to focus on horror and crime novels. Sometimes it’s tough to prioritize reading for fun but I always feel better when I can find the time to sit down with a book.

What tech tool could you not live without?  Can I count my paper planner? I need to write things down to remember them, so I keep my schedule and to-do lists organized in a weekly planner—without it, I’d be lost. In my classes and research, I love using Qualtrics for survey design, and my university offers all faculty, students, and staff a free account—so I always teach it to my students and encourage them to use this tool. I also appreciate resources like JASP, making statistical analysis freely accessible to students.