Teaching Philosophy
My teaching emphasizes critical and creative thinking, cooperative dialogue, and compassionate curiosity. Pedagogically, I equip students with the social science frameworks necessary to analyze the institutions and social processes that influence their everyday experiences.
My teaching is grounded in the belief that setting high expectations, offering meaningful support, and providing attentive mentorship encourages growth for all parties. This approach has proven effective across diverse student cohorts, from eighteen-year-olds in their first college seminar to seminarians integrating scholarly insights into their pastoral care to adult learners coming back to the classroom with decades of lived experience to share.
Recognitions
Princeton University’s Sociology department, McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, and Graduate School have all awarded me for excellence in teaching and mentorship. The recognition I value most, though, arrives in the form of continued conversations with students and unexpected updates from mentees as they chart their own courses.
“The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students.
What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.”
-Paulo Freire
Teaching Interests and Current Involvement
My teaching interests are varied and include sociology of religion, research methods, social psychology, organizations, and topics concerning gender and sexuality. I have experience teaching across institutional contexts and have enjoyed supervising multiple cohorts of student interns as well as undergraduate research assistants.
I am currently enrolled in Princeton's Teaching Transcript Program and serve as a research mentor with the Office of Undergraduate Research’s ReMatch program.