Teaching
Photo with undergraduate mentee Holly Holland
I have experience teaching courses in Gender Politics, American Government, and Undergraduate Research Methods. Through my teaching, I develop students critical thinking skills while also introducing them to a wide range of theories and methods within the social sciences. I love involving students in my research and received an Undergraduate Research Mentorship Award from the University of Michigan 2022.
Examples of my teaching, with linked syllabi, below.
Semesters Taught: Spring 2024, Spring 2021
This course is a broad overview of social science work about gender in the context of U.S. politics. Gender, while socially constructed, has a tremendous impact on the political world, influencing how individuals engage in politics and how the state relates to its citizens. This course begins with how we can understand gender as a social grouping. It then covers a range of political events and policy issues related to gender, how gender informs citizen’s political attitudes and behaviors, how gender shapes the choices candidates and politicians make. A fundamental premise of this course is that a person's gender intersects with other identities, including, but not limited to, race, class, partisanship, and sexuality, influencing both one's personal and structural relationships with politics.
Semesters Taught: Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024
The purpose of this course is to introduce the quantitative methods that political scientists use to form and answer questions about the world. As political scientists, we seek to use rigorous analysis to make political claims about how institutions operate and how citizens think and behave. Students' gain experience with theory building, research design, hypothesis testing, statistical methodology, and data analysis in R. This course also challenges students to think about the assumptions made in social science thinking, making them better consumers of information.
Semesters Taught: Fall 2023, Fall 2024
This course is guided by a fundamental question: “How democratic is the U.S. political system?” Each week, we will discuss how a different aspect of American political structures, institutions, or people’s behavior within our political system reflect democratic ideals in practice. This includes topics like civil rights and civil liberties, political participation, campaigns and media, and electoral representation. This course challenges students to think critically about their political world, through discussion of historical events and the current news cycle, while also helping students to develop writing, analytic, and information literacy skills.