Statement of Teaching
  Philosophy& Interests

  Syllabus: Democratic
  Discourse (PLSC001)

Before entering graduate school, I spent two years teaching mathematics in evening courses at the Santa Fe Indian School, followed by three years as a full-time mathematics teacher at The Native American Preparatory School in Rowe, New Mexico. As a graduate student at Penn State, I had the privilege of teaching American Government as part of the innovative LEAP interdisciplinary sequence, for which I received the Robert S. Friedman Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Department of Political Science at Penn Sate. In 2007, I had the honor of serving as a teaching assistant for the Summer Institute in Political Psychology at Stanford University. In all my teaching endeavors, I integrate the same emphasis on critical thinking skills that I was privileged to receive as an undergraduate myself at St. John's College (the "Great Books School" -- student population 400) with the first-rate training in social science inquiry and research methodology that have been the hallmarks of my graduate career at Penn State University (student population 40,000). In Fall 2008 at UC Davis, I will teach an undergraduate course on policy agenda-setting and a graduate seminar on Presidential rhetoric.