PhD in Cognitive Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
MA in Cognitive Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
BA in Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
My BA, MA and PhD degrees all focus on some aspect of psychology and all were earned at UCLA. While in my doctoral program, I majored in cognitive psychology and minored in psychometrics, spending much of my time as a graduate teaching assistant participating in the undergraduate research methods course. Years later I was offered an opportunity to teach research methods at Antioch and took advantage of the chance to teach 15 students rather than 225 students each quarter. For the past fifteen years, I have almost exclusively taught statistics and research in both undergraduate and graduate programs on the AULA campus. In addition to teaching at AULA, I serve as the Director of Academic Assessment for the campus. This role requires me to work with program faculty evaluating student learning outcomes and creating plans for using assessment information to improve practice. I am also the proud faculty sponsor of the Student Action Network, a student-run organization that brings social justice events and awareness to the campus. I consider my job at Antioch University to help students reach their potential as contributors to the larger community, making sure they receive the training and guidance they need to take action on their own professional and social justice initiatives.
Teaching at AULA means making accessible to students information they need to become critical consumers and contributors in a very complex world. Teaching statistics and quantitative research at AULA offers a particular challenge because the student population often comes into the academic program having had little history working with numbers in a critical thinking context. The most effective teaching allows students to interact with data, reflect on the way they are used to influence decision making, and relate those ideas to their own experiences. Antioch University students have great success learning statistics and research methods because they understand the importance of critical thinking skills and are open to considering how they extend to the creation and evaluation of quantitative data.
