I am committed to high quality and engaged teaching of both undergraduate and graduate students. As a graudate student, I gained extensive experience as a teaching assistant, teaching associate, and teaching fellow for undergraduate anthropology courses at UCLA (including Physical Anthropology, Language and Culture, and Evolution of Human Societies). While there, I co-designed and co-taught an interdisciplinary psychiatry honors seminar (“Drug Use and Abuse: Anthropological and Biomedical Perspectives”) with a senior research psychiatrist at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. I currently teach at the University of Southern California, at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

The student-centered educational culture at UCLA and USC has instilled in me a deep appreciation for flexible, interactive, and personalized styles of teaching that contribute to the development of independent thinking, critical inquiry, and creativity; all of which are important goals for any post-secondary education.

The link below provides quantitative and qualitative evaluations of my teaching skills.  First I present quantitative summaries of my teaching evaluations from UCLA.  As these data demonstrate, my average instruction effectiveness for ranking across eight areas of evaluation for all courses taught was 8.15 out of 9. 

Areas of evaluation encompass: 1) knowledge of material; 2) concern for student learning; 3) organization of presentation; 4) scope of discussions; 5) student-teacher interaction; 6) communication skills; 7) value of section; and 8) overall evaluation of teaching assistant.  In the broader context of cross-course departmental evaluations, I have been consistently ranked in the 95th percentile or higher throughout my teaching career.

Following the quantitative summary is a selection of student comments taken from anonymous course evaluation forms, which include a space for open-ended comments on performance and teaching abilities.

Summary data on my teaching effectiveness and select student comments are available in the following pfd document: Teaching Evaluations and Student Comments (Cumulative Data).

GRADUATE

• Cultural Psychodynamics: Reconceptualizing Self and Psyche in Society [Syllabus]

• Medical Ethnobiology: Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies [Syllabus]

UNDERGRADUATE

• Latin American Communities [Description]

• Evolution of Human Societies [Syllabus]

POTENTIAL COURSES

• Globalization, Transnationalism, and Subjectivity (Graduate/Undergraduate) [Description]

• Latin American Social Movements (Undergraduate) [Description]

• Medical Anthropology & Global Health (Graduate / Undergraduate) [Description]

GRADUATE

• Doing, Being, and the Constitution of Meaning in Everyday Life [Syllabus]

• Therapeutic Uses of Self: Contemporary Psychodynamic Perspectives [Syllabus]

UNDERGRADUATE

• OT 300: The Lifeworlds of Individuals and Groups in Cultural Persepctive [Syllabus]