Teaching and mentoring undergraduate students has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my academic experience. I have had the pleasure of serving as an instructor of record for Introduction to U.S. Population Health and Data Analysis, leading two summer workshops on statistics at the Carolina Population Center, and being a teaching assistant for an introductory sociology course and a higher-level class on the sociology of health and mental illness at the undergraduate level. I have also worked as a teaching assistant for graduate-level courses and workshops on structural equation modeling. I am proud to have received the Wilson Teaching Award at UNC in recognition of my instruction.

As an instructor, I challenge myself to make sure students leave the course with a good sense of the variety of approaches sociologists use to examine social phenomena. Even in a course more narrowly focused on health and population issues, I believe it is important to expose students to the many and diverse subfields and topic areas that define sociology, making sure to avoid the impression that sociology is just a collection of only superficially-related specialty areas. My goal is to tackle a given subject – for example, obesity – from a variety of angles; such as drawing on cultural sociology and the sociology of knowledge and science to discuss social norms and the framing of obesity as a disease; using medical sociology to consider how and why we diagnose obesity; and looking to population health and demography for an empirical understanding of how we quantify its impact on individual- and societal-level health. Interdisciplinary content is often invaluable, allowing for comparisons between sociology and related disciplines in which students may already have experience.

Importantly, I have noted the significant proportion of students enrolling in sociology courses because they are interested in better understanding the roots of social inequality and how inequality intersects with their chosen fields of study and careers, often having little prior exposure to sociology. These students have incredibly valuable experiences and inputs to share from their other courses, as well time spent doing internships, shadowing, and/or direct workplace experience, which I actively ask them to reflect on, share, and connect to the materials used in class. Soliciting personal feedback from students about their interests and experiences not only helps to drive class discussion, but also allows me to make necessary changes to readings and assignments to help take full advantage of students’ experiences. My goal is to encourage students to more readily apply a sociological lens in their future endeavors, promoting positive habits of questioning and learning about the social factors affecting peoples’ lives.

I have included a PDF of my most recent Introduction to Population Health in the U.S. syllabus: Introduction to Population Health in the U.S. – Spring 2020.