Teaching & Mentoring
Teaching and mentoring students is an important part of my academic work. In addition to regularly teaching multiple classes that often span the discipline of political science, I mentor students by advising senior projects, independent study courses, and internships. I also regularly employ paid student research assistants who gain practical experience with the social scientific research process, learn and practice quantitative and qualitative research skills, and are socialized into a professional research setting. In addition, I incorporate student course work into my research agenda by teaching courses that give students research experience as well as measuring student feedback to new coursework.
In short, I see it as my job to help students assemble a "tool box" of educational experiences and practical skills that advantage them in their future endeavors, whether graduate school or employment. I have a successful track record of student mentees attending graduate programs, law school, and being placed in competitive internship programs.
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On this page, I share sample course syllabi, pedagogical research, and examples of mentorship. Follow the links to learn more.
BEACoN Research & Mentorship Program
In the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years, I participated in the BEACoN (Believe, Educate & Empower, Advocate, Collaborate, and Nurture) Research and Mentorship Program at Cal Poly. This program pairs students and professors who work together to complete a research project. The students give a presentation on the project at the end of the spring quarter.
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Pictured is Eddie presenting our 2021-22 project, "How to Win a SOGI Referendum," for which he collected and coded newspaper articles about local campaigns to repeal LGBTQ-inclusive civil rights laws.
Social Justice Teach-In
The Cal Poly College of Liberal Arts hosts an annual Social Justice Teach-in featuring presentations from across the university on the subject of equality and social justice.
In 2022, a member of one of my research teams (and now Cal Poly grad), Lydia, and I presented on our work surveying LGBTQ people about their religious and political experiences to over 100 attendees. Speaking during the presentation, Lydia said "As I learned more and analyzed the results of the survey, I realized I wasn’t just studying words on a page, but how people exist and make sense of themselves and the world. Their perspectives even helped me understand the things I believed better. Being a student researcher let me do more than learn; it helped me grow."
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Teaching Students to Research
In 2022, I led a course in the Cal Poly Honors Program described as "a research-intensive seminar in which students will actively participate in the research process by interviewing LGBTQ people about their religious and political behavior, then transcribe their interview(s). In addition to experiencing the qualitative research process, students will engage with literature from Political Science, Sociology, Social Psychology, Religious Studies, and LGBTQ Studies that focuses on the role of religion in LGBTQ identity and political development. By the end of the seminar, students will have contributed research to this body of knowledge and given voice to an understudied aspect of the LGBTQ social and political experience."
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For 10 weeks, students learned about LGBTQ politics, religion & politics, and interview research. They also conducted and transcribed interviews from LGBTQ people that shed light on important research questions that will feature in my future work. One student shared "Your course introduced me to what research in a field you are passionate about is like."
Courses Taught & Sample Syllabi
I have experience teaching a variety of courses in American Politics, Political Theory, and Public Policy. Below, I share syllabi for a small number of the courses I have developed at Cal Poly and at Bowling Green State University where I was employed as a Lecturer in the Political Science Department and was affiliated faculty in the Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Department for two years.
Introduction to American Government
Course Objectives, Students will:
1. Analyze and interrogate the legacy of political philosophies such as Classical Liberalism, Classical Republicanism, and inegalitarianism on American political development.
2. Identify and compare the institutional structures of the American political system.
3. Investigate how political power is wielded by governmental actors and institutions, social movements, interest groups, voters, and the media and used to shape public policy as well as the use and effects of social constructionism in denying political power to minorities in the United States.
4. Become more discerning consumers of political events, messages and processes by applying critical theories and methodologies of political science.
5. Synthesize information to develop and effectively communicate their own political ideology, and cultivate an awareness of the relationship between the individual and the collective political system
Introduction to State & Local Government
Course Objectives, Students will:
1. Apply the comparative method to the study of political systems.
2. Identify the institutional structures of the Ohio political system and define their functions.
3. Describe intergovernmental relationships across all levels of American government.
4. Develop an understanding of and effectively communicate the budgetary process in the state of Ohio.
5. Compare and contrast the structures of state and local governments across the United States – including legislatures, judicial systems, executives, bureaucracies, county, municipal, and metropolitan governments.
6. Analyze and effectively communicate major public policy challenges and possible solutions which confront state and local governments in the areas of education, health care, and criminal justice.
LGBTQ Politics
Course Objectives, Students will:
1. Evaluate the development and current state of sexual and gender minority movements in the United States, including an evaluation of historical and potential policy goals;
2. Demonstrate an understanding of the development and conflation of gender and sexuality and how law and public policy have defined and regulated gender and sexuality in the United States;
3. Define terms such as ‘intersectional invisibility’ and ‘political intersectionality’ in the context of gender and sexual minority social movements and interest groups, including an interrogation of the internal power dynamics of sexual and gender minority communities with an examination of the effects of racism, sexism, biphobia, and transphobia on political behavior;
4. Analyze and identify the theoretical assumptions which underlay queer, liberationist, and assimilationist political philosophies and apply them to historical and contemporary sexual and gender minority struggles for civil rights.
Evaluate the role of religion in shaping the political agenda of sexual and gender minorities.
Public Opinion & Voting Behavior
Course Objectives, Students Will:
1. Define terms such as political opinion and political participation and analyze their antecedents, influences, methods of change, and importance to democratic governance.
2. Analyze and identify concepts related to political knowledge and demonstrate an understanding of how political knowledge influences public opinion and political behavior.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of public opinion polling including key terms and methodology and assess the role of public opinion polling in a democracy.
4. Analyze trends in U.S. public opinion and key processes associated with aggregation.
5. Assess and synthesize social scientific theories of socialization, the linkage between public opinion and public policy, political participation, and vote choice.
Basic Concepts of Political Thought
Course Objectives, Students Will:
1. Understand and be able to critically evaluate and utilize concepts, key questions, and main
arguments presented in major texts of political theory.
2. Apply political theories to analyses of contemporary questions of political importance.
3. Interpret political theory texts – their arguments, style, and different levels of meaning.
4. Identify, evaluate, and analyze competing ideas that determine the principles of existence and functioning of
political communities and their different political forms.