Courses I teach

Experimental Psychology: Learning (PS/NE 323) syllabus

This course provides an opportunity for students to engage with the research process, from doing a literature search, planning and running experiments, to analyzing, reporting and presenting results. Animal research is conducted using ‘Sniffy, the virtual rat’, and video recordings of laboratory mice obtained from current Boston University research projects. The focus is on relevant theory and research in the psychological field of learning, which not only informs aspects of clinical treatment, but is also widely used in the field of behavioral neuroscience. Learning theory makes direct connections with every psychological subfield and is foundational to understanding how and why behaviors develop through experience. This course examines how learning theory is based on existing empirical research and inspires and informs new research throughout the fields of psychology and neuroscience.

Trends in Contemporary Psychology: “Building an Adaptive Brain” (PS 504) syllabus

Many believe that as the brain advances through developmental stages it operates as an immature or inefficient version of the mature adult brain. In this course, we challenge this notion and examine how the brain is adapted to excel in each successive stage of development from infancy through early adulthood, leveraging experiences that predominate at each stage. We discuss defining characteristics of distinct developmental stages while also considering risk for psychiatric disease and concomitant opportunities for resilience that arise from typical and atypical developmental processes. Topicsinclude neurodevelopment, plasticity, social learning, fear learning, reward learning, executive function, psychiatric disease, and resilience. This course is run as an advanced seminar with approximately two-thirds of each class period set aside for discussion of primary literature.

Teaching Philosophy

I am committed to providing support, encouragement, and inspiration to those I teach. I believe my role as a teacher is to foster my students’ engagement with their education so that they feel confident in pursuing their own specific goals and interests. In fully committing to this role, I will contribute to an academic environment that is challenging enough to be intellectually stimulating, while also providing the support necessary for students to learn that they can rise to meet my high expectations. My goal is for students to leave my classes feeling confident and enthusiastic about what they have accomplished. I draw from established practices and my own experiences to accomplish this, while also continuously expanding my teaching methods to accommodate and support the needs of my students.

My teaching style encourages a comprehensive and contextualized understanding of the material. I believe the best resource I can provide my students is the ability to actively engage in their own learning processes. I feel strongly that students should be confident in their ability to ask and pursue answers to their questions, rather than having the answers. I make a point to convey to my students and mentees that the basis for cutting-edge research is to keep asking questions up until the point that answers are no longer readily available. My teaching emphasizes three main approaches, which I have come to associate with successful course outcomes from my personal experiences as a student and as an instructor, as well as from reviewing relevant teaching literature. My specific approaches are as follows:

(1)   Engage students with the material. I integrate a variety of in-class exercises, including hands-on activities, video material, and small group discussions to break up periods of didactic lecture. I also designate class time to build on and extend information available in the textbook, with textbook readings assigned for completion prior to each class. In this way, class time is focused on reinforcing key concepts and engaging in discussion about the material. For example, time in class emphasizes the methods and experiments that led to the current understanding of the textbook material, and when relevant, discusses recent empirical literature that is actively expanding the scientific community’s knowledge of the course materials. I have found that contextualizing course material into how it manifests outside the classroom facilitates engagement with the material, and in turn, increases comprehension and retention.

(2)   Engage students in the learning process. I utilize an interactive peer-to-peer approach (e.g., team based learning) that requires students to familiarize themselves with material enough to be able to explain it, and in doing so receive feedback on potential gaps in their knowledge. In addition, I regularly have students break into small groups to answer questions or brainstorm on a specific topic, which subsequently leads into class discussion. Prefacing class discussions by allowing students to discuss with their peers encourages participation by increasing the students’ confidence in their contributions. By creating an environment where student questions and participation are commonplace, I have a metric of how material is being received, allowing me to allocate time according to the relative understanding of my students.

(3)   Acknowledge and accommodate diversity in the learning process. A critical skill that I believe an instructor should possess is the ability to embrace the diversity in student backgrounds, as this can inform their learning styles and interests. People differ in the ways that they learn, whether it is listening to lectures, engaging in exercises, writing notes, or partaking in discussions. To encourage and accommodate the strengths of different students, my teaching style uses a variety of approaches (e.g., hands-on activities, discussion, writing, among others) to help students develop their knowledge throughout the course. In addition, my grading rubrics also incorporate these varied mechanisms. Finally, office hours are set based on student feedback and schedules to encourage students to seek help as needed.