Overview

Teaching 

As a teacher, my goals are to foster students' interests in probing different social issues and to develop critical thinking/analyzing and creative problem-solving skills. Social work professionals are facing increasing challenges with rapid changes in society. Most jobs in social service agencies require social workers to solve problems on a day to day basis. Critical thinking/analyzing and creative problem-solving skills are essential for them to help clients with various needs. Interests/curiosity to explore more in-depth into an issue will enable them to continue learning and professional growth throughout their lives. To achieve this goal, I seek to link class discussion and activities to real social problems and help students discover their own interests and expertise. 

Teaching Philosophy and Courses Taught

My teaching philosophy emphasizes respect for students' diversity, critical and creating thinking, and integration of teaching with practice and research. Each student is unique due to their background and life experience. Knowing students' differences in background, learning needs, and learning process can help them engage in class and develop their own expertise. At the UTC, I mostly taught courses on social work research methods, theories, and macro social work practices for both undergraduate and graduate students. For all my courses, I emphasized problem-solving activities in my instruction. The completed statements of teaching philosophy and the list of courses I taught, syllabi, and sample assignment packet were included under the subsections. 

Professional Development Efforts 

I made efforts to improve my professional skills in teaching. I attended the Pedagogy course for new faculty and several workshops organized by the Walker Centers for Teaching and Learning (WCTL). Particularly, during the COVID-19, to improve the teaching effectiveness in an online synchronous format, I tried to develop my knowledge about software such as Zoom, Kaltura, Cengage MindTap, Team, and Google slides as much as I can through multiple workshops. These workshops inspired me to be more creative in using different active learning strategies and technology in face-to-face, hybrid and online courses. I applied for the Course Redesign Program for the MSW course (SOCW 5223) to convert the face-to-face format to the Hybrid format, and finally got the course certified by QM in 2022. Currently, I am applying the Transparency in Learning and Teaching Model (TILT) to my course design. 

Teaching Evaluations

The course learning evaluation of students and teaching observations show some improvement in my teaching. The average student rating increased from 6.13 in Fall 2018 to 6.67 in Fall 2022. The average score of all areas is 6.34 for the past five years. Most comments from students are positive about my course instruction (average score for course instruction is 6.60). Both students and class observers provided valuable suggestions on the areas for improvement. In the future, I will try to reduce my lecturing time, and allow more time for in-class activities, also insert small active learning elements into the lecture; make my presentation slides more concise and give students time to take notes and think; better control the class discussion and manage the time; add small review activities at the beginning and the end of class; and find small ways to better monitor for group activities and assignments. The teaching observations, course evaluation, and my reflections on those reports are also attached under the subsections. 

Advising & Mentoring

I worked as the academic advisor for both BSW students and MSW students (the number of my advisees is around 25 BSW students and 6-8 MSW students). During the advising session, I went through the curriculum with students, gave them advice on the core and elective courses, and answered their questions. I also helped students to transfer credits, appeal for substitution, and check for graduation requirements.  In addition, I mentored both BSW and MSW students on their research projects ( approximately 50 students).