Teaching

I am the Editor-in-Chief and a founder of The Philosophy Teaching Library, and I am also a pedagogy contributor at the Blog of the American Philosophical Association, the Daily Nous, PEA Soup, and The Philosopher’s Cocoon.  Previously, I have assisted with course design through the Virtues & Vocations Project and the Philosophy as a Way of Life Project, and, before that, I began my career as an educator in Mississippi with Teach for America. Below, you will find a summary of my work on course design along with links to my popular teaching contributions.

Holly Springs High School - Teach for America

The Philosophy Teaching Library

The Philosophy Teaching Library is a collection of introductory primary texts, excerpted texts that include commentary, illustrative examples, and detailed argument breakdowns that help boost student comprehension and situate the work in its historical and philosophical context. The Library is both scholarly - employing a peer review process – and accessible, an open educational resource aimed at instructors, students, and the general public. You can read more about the collection in this piece from the American Philosophical Association.

Virtues and Vocations

Virtues and Vocations is a national forum for scholars and practitioners across disciplines to consider how best to cultivate character in pre-professional and professional education. My role with the project focused on coaching faculty across disciplines through the process of creating virtue-centered courses, and our faculty-training workshops have now established character-related classes at over 25 colleges and universities. For more information about project along with how to get involved, check out the list of upcoming events.

APA Seed Grants for the MAP Mentoring Program

Undergraduate students do not always have the support they need to connect studying philosophy to a productive career path. In order to bridge this gap, this APA grant funded project created three seed chapters of the MAP Mentoring Program at the University of Southern California, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of South Florida, pairing undergraduate students with graduate student mentors for support applying to graduate school and exploring career options in philosophy. For more information, see my co-authored paper "Designing an Undergraduate Philosophy Mentoring Program" in Teaching Philosophy.

AAPT Innovation in Teaching Grant

Conversations about race, class, and gender more often devolve into entrenched stand-offs than result in productive discussion, but research has shown that small dialogue groups are one of the best strategies for confronting these hot-button issues. For my Spring 2021 course, "The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender", I was awarded a Grant for Innovation in Teaching from the American Association of Philosophy Teachers to incorporate small group discussions into the course. You can read more about this class, along with the grant findings, in my Teaching Philosophy paper "Seeking to Understand" (with Zac Odermatt).

Mellon Course Design Coordinator

I worked with the Philosophy as a Way of Life Mellon Initiative, supervising a 10+ person team to create new Philosophy as a Way of Life courses at 13 colleges and universities, including Wesleyan University, Florida State University, and Boise State University, with the course at Wesleyan featured in the New York Times. To learn more about our course redesigns, feel free to read one of our case studies: (1) Living a Good Life at Wesleyan University, (2) Philosophy as a Way of Life at Florida State University, and (3) God and the Good Life at Boise State University. 

Teach for America

Before graduate school, I was a full-time mathematics instructor with Teach for America, an organization that places highly-qualified teachers in low-income school districts. During the 2012-2013 academic year, the average mathematics ACT score of my classes rose from a 17.5 at the beginning of the academic year to a 22.4 at year’s end.  For these efforts, I received the Rotary Award for Excellence in Education Service in 2012 and the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award in 2012 and 2013.  Full student benchmark data for my time with Teach for America can be found here.

Popular Teaching Contributions