Teaching

I never set out to become a teacher, but early on in my career I fell in love with that part of the job. And now I have the privilege of being able to spend a great deal of my time helping students learn and grow and become the best versions of themselves. My primary goals as philosophy instructor are to help my students appreciate the importance of philosophical reflection and to teach them how to reason, write, and argue more effectively.

In my introductory courses, I use key figures from the history of philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, among others) to help guide students through the ultimate questions of human life: What sorts of things exist? What are we? What can I know? What is right and wrong? Why be moral? Do we have free will? Is there a God?

In my upper-level courses, I tend to focus more on recent debates in philosophy, while also making sure to give historical concerns and figures a fair voice (mostly because I think that the ancients and medievals got so much right). My aim here is twofold. First, I see these upper-level courses as an opportunity to give students the philosophical tools and vocabulary that they need to enter into the ongoing conversation that is philosophy. As a metaphysician, my other aim is to show students just how central metaphysics is to many of the issues and debates that they already care about. So much of ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion depend upon a particular understanding of what the world is like, and my hope is that students will walk away from my courses with an appreciation for deep questions about the fundamental structure of reality.

For more information on the courses that I have taught, please see the links below. Here you will find links to syllabi, sample assignments, and other teaching resources that I have used in my courses.

Courses Taught:

Introduction to Philosophy

[Syllabus] [Sample Assignment]

Ethics

[Syllabus] [Sample Assignment]

Philosophy of the Human Person

[Syllabus] [Sample Assignment]

Metaphysics

[Syllabus] [Sample Assignment]

Philosophy of Science

[Syllabus] [Sample Assignment]

Philosophy of Religion/Philosophical Theology