Teaching

Spring 2026 Courses

I am teaching one course (Research in HDFS: Methodological Approaches) this Spring (2026) semester at the University of Arkansas. Please sign up for courses on the University website. If you have any specific questions about course topics, feel free to message the HDFS office or email me and I will respond as soon as I can.

HDFS 47603 - Research in HDFS: Methodological Approaches

Semester: Spring 2026
This class introduces the methodology of HDFS and other social sciences in the social world. It covers research design, sampling, measurement, and other topics that underlie the social science conclusions presented to you in other classes. The class begins with an introduction to the goals of social science research, then focuses on the understanding of the 3 validities with which social scientists, and consumer of social science, must concern themselves: Internal, Measurement, and External. Each of these three validities is used as the focus of a course section. The class concludes with a fourth section that integrates these topics and other social science methods. Prerequisite: HDFS major and Junior Standing. (Typically offered: Fall and Spring)

HDFS 44703 - Multicultural Families

Semester: Fall 2026
The course provides students with opportunities to gain awareness of their own cultures and families, reflect on families from a diverse array of cultures, and develop critical thinking skills needed to effectively engage with people and families from cultures different than their own. Prerequisite: HDFS 24903, Junior or Senior standing, and HDFS majors or IDST majors with HDFS track. (Typically offered: Fall and Spring)

HDFS 24103 - Family Relations

Semester: Fall 2026
Courtship, marriage, and parenthood in the United States, with attention to cultural and psychological factors which affect relations among family members. Lecture 3 hours per week. Typically offered: Fall, Spring, and Summer)

Teaching Philosophy

Higher education is often viewed as a world apart from our material lives. After graduation, students are frequently told “welcome to the real world.” As a scholar of health and families, I reject the notion that the knowledge and ideas introduced in higher education must exist in a vacuum, inapplicable to everyday lives.

Central to my teaching philosophy is the belief that higher education should demonstrate to students the intimate experience of big ideas, and work to connect theories and concepts to lived experiences. Further, I view learning as a social process; that is, people learn from interacting with each other, and this learning takes time and practice. I apply these perspectives in three key ways.

First, I anticipate that my students bring their lives and experiences with them into the classroom. This can present both opportunities and challenges. While the study of health and families is a rigorous and systematic endeavor, theories and empirical findings will always be met by individuals through a filter of personal experience. This can be an opportunity for students to discover insights by connecting course material to their own lives, but it may also be discomforting in cases when the materials challenge their worldview. I am sensitive to the ways that class topics may be felt in a negative way by students who have personal experience with certain class content.

Recognizing that lives do not begin and end at the classroom door also means that I avoid putting students in positions where they feel like spokespersons for larger groups to which they may or may not identify with. I do, however, encourage all students to share their thoughts and they often voluntarily share personal experiences relevant to course material that provides a new perspective for classmates and myself. At its best, this provides students the opportunity to learn not just from me or the readings, but also from one another. While my courses do highlight inequalities between groups, I also emphasize within-group differences to cultivate an intersectional perspective and complicate overly simplistic perspectives of any social group.

Second, I work to ensure that course lessons do not stop at the classroom door. With this aim in mind, I try to facilitate opportunities for students to discuss course material with each other both within and beyond the classroom. When appropriate for the class size, format, and structure, I require students to sign up for a day where they will lead class discussion as a group of panelists who have previously met and discussed the reading outside of class, as well as prepared questions for their classmates. These requirements offer students an opportunity to share their ideas in a smaller, less formal setting with classmates, and then to formulate those ideas into key thoughts and questions to share in the more formal classroom setting.

Finally, I encourage my students to apply the concepts learned in class to current events and everyday lives. For example, in some courses I offer a small amount of extra credit to students for tweeting about concepts we covered in class and applying it to current events or a situation from their everyday life. In other courses, they might be offered additional credit by utilizing a meme to communicate a key concept from the course. Of course, another ideal way of achieving this goal is to provide students with internships or service-learning and research opportunities, though these opportunities also require more effort, self-motivation, and commitment on the part of the student.

Teaching is a great privilege and responsibility. I do not see teaching as “shaping” students, but providing them the tools to think critically about the world, their place within it, and how they interact with it. As a social scientist, we are a part of the subject we study, which means we often take-for-granted many aspects of our lives and leave them unanalyzed. Because of this fundamental challenge for social science, one of the most essential skills we can develop is the ability to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways--to think critically about the many aspects of life we tend to uncritically accept.

Courses previously taught at UA - Little Rock

Intro to Sociology: SOC 2300

Senior Capstone Seminar: SOC 4387

Urban Sociology: SOC 3341

Poverty and Place: SOC 4395

Courses previously taught at University of Missouri

Taught while a doctoral student and graduate instructor.

Intro to Sociology (Honors): SOC 1000H

Sociology of Health: SOC 3440

The Family: SOC 3420

Aging and The Life Course: SOC 4210

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