My teaching philosophy is informed by the three C’s:

Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Compassion.

All three are needed together. If you are only a great critical thinker, you will lack the creativity and compassion to tackle the world’s problems. If you only have creativity, you will lack critical thinking to make assessments and compassion to bring your creativity to bear on lives. If you only have compassion, you will fail to think creatively and critically about how to care for others.

The three C’s form not only my philosophy for the classroom and approach to pedagogy, but are also capacities I hope to model for and grow in my students. Through equipping my students with sociological tools, I aim to impart a sociological imagination that encompasses these three capacities. Practically this means familiarizing my students with social theory and methods to critically evaluate the social world, providing them with assignments that allow them to exercise creativity, and modeling compassion in the ways we speak about the social, recognizing that behind our studies are human beings.

At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I teach undergraduate and graduate level methods courses and courses on race and ethnicity.