I entered graduate school in 2018 with the goal of teaching at the college level, which was inspired in large part by the community of teacher-scholars I worked alongside as an admissions counselor at Earlham College.
My experiences since have validated that decision. At Penn State, I have been the instructor of record for two courses: American Political Campaigns and Elections and Introduction to Political Research. I designed each of these courses independently, and made a special effort to incorporate significant learning experiences (Fink 2003) into the coursework.
On the strength of these course designs, my student evaluations, and peer observation, I was awarded the department’s Robert S. Friedman Award for Excellence in Teaching following the 2021-22 academic year.
Here, you can find some information about my teaching philosophy, past courses, evidence of teaching effectiveness, and future teaching interests.
Teaching Philosophy
Experiential learning was an key part of the learning environment at Earlham, and has become a centerpiece of my own teaching as well.
I use Dee Fink’s (2003) taxonomy of significant learning to prepare my courses. This approach holds that students should learn actively through immersive assignments that apply course content. It also gives students time to reflect on their use for the skills they are building. In this way, course instruction is not just about conferring course content, but also an ethos of learning that students can carry into their postgraduate lives.
You can read more about significant learning here.
This is template that I have used to design my courses: Designing Courses for Significant Learning.
Sample Syllabi
Here are the syllabi for courses I taught at Penn State. University-specific statements have been removed for brevity.
Teaching Effectiveness
While acknowledging the biases and limitations of student evaluations (Kreitzer and Sweet-Cushman 2021), I take pride in students’ positive responses to my teaching. Pooling across courses, 68% of my students (32 out of 47) have responded to Penn State’s course evaluation. Highlights of their responses include:
- 97% of students assigned me a “high” rating (of 6 or 7 on a seven-point scale) for overall teaching effectiveness.
- Over half of open-ended responses positively mentioned the assigned coursework.
- Two-fifths of open-ended responses positively mentioned my engagement with students and the material.
On the strength of these evaluations, my course design, and peer observation, I was awarded the department’s Robert S. Friedman Award for Excellence in Teaching after the 2021-22 academic year.
Please contact me at sbw59 [at] psu.edu to review full, unedited copies of student evaluations.
Teaching Interests
I am eager to expand my teaching portfolio, and in addition to introductory courses in American politics and research design, I am equipped to offer the following courses…
Primary substantive expertise: Campaigns and Elections, Public Opinion, Public Policy, Race and Politics, State and Local Politics
Additional content knowledge: Congress, Executives / the Presidency, LGBTQ Politics, Media and Social Media
Quantitative expertise: Introduction to Computational Methods, Experiments and Quasi-Experiments, Survey Design and Analysis, Text-as-Data, Time-Variant Data
In line with my commitment to significant learning, I am also interested in collaborative learning experiences with undergraduates. As examples, I would be eager to discuss conducting a research practicum with students (e.g., Weinschenk 2020), or supervising experiences in election administration (Mann et al. 2018) or public opinion polling (Williamson 2011).