Teaching

Certificate in University Teaching

I earned my Certificate in University Teaching (CUT) from The Graduate School at Syracuse University's Future Professoriate Program (FPP). In doing so, I participated in six professional development seminars (see below), undertook an independent mentored teaching experience (see information on PAI 755 below), and attended the 2023 FPP Annual Conference, which provided additional professional development content and networking with other instructors. 

CUT Professional Development Seminars:

• 2023:

  • Navigating Challenges of Diversity in the Classroom

  • Universal Design for Learning: Foundations and Applications

  • Teaching Students How to Learn

  • Lesson Planning as Learning Planning

• 2024:

  • Fundamentals of Instructional Design

  • Active Learning: Making the Most of “Lecture” Time

PAI 755: Public Administration and Democracy (Summer 2022)

Overview, Syllabus & Course Materials

This graduate-level course provides students with the opportunity to grapple with fundamental questions about the relationship between public administration and democracy. Each session is grounded in questions such as: What is democracy? What are the tensions between bureaucracy and democracy? And, to whom are public administrators responsible? 

The course is a required, introductory course that all MPA students take over a one-month period during the summer prior to the start of the Fall semester. As a TA, following the professor's morning lecture to the entire class, I was responsible for leading a discussion section of 20 students. The length of our meeting ranged from 1-2 hours and usually included a role-play exercise intended to offer insights about how student's answers to course questions will affect the way they practice public administration. For example, when discussing "What is an ideal political system?" and "What is bureaucracy and do we need it?", I broke my section into groups of five students, each of which were tasked with developing a political and administrative system for a fictional country. When discussing "How should we think about social equity in public administration?" we used the case study of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan and did a gallery walk (providing feedback on other's idea via colored markers and post-it notes) to think through the case using a social equity lens.

Further information about these course activities and materials are below:

• Selected Discussion Section Slides (developed personally in coordination with lead instructor): Ideal Political System; Bureaucracy; Social Equity

• Selected Discussion Section Case Studies (developed personally in coordination with lead instructor): Flint 

PAI 755: Public Administration and Democracy (Summer 2022)

Course Evaluations

My discussion section students were asked to asses me across 8 questions on a 1- to 5-point scale, where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree. The table below shows the average response to the eight questions on the form.

In addition, the students could provide qualitative feedback (available here), and Dr. Tina Nabatchi, the lead professor for this course, also provided a detailed review of my performance (available here). Dr. Nabatchi sat in on my discussion section twice to observe my teaching and provide feedback.

I was pleased to hear that students appreciated my efforts to actively listen during our discussions, as well as push students out of their comfort zones in appropriate ways, such as requiring different students each day to report back from small groups, asking probing follow-up questions, or using complex case studies that required students to grapple with tensions between their ideals and real world situations. I also learned that, especially when using this case study approach, it is important to give adequate time to the students - and that what I think will be adequate time is not always enough. I look forward to incorporating this feedback as I build my own courses that discuss normative issues and policy options and utilize small-group activities or case studies.

PAI 722: Quantitative Analysis / Program Evaluation (Spring 2022)

This graduate-level course builds on PAI 721 and aims to equip students with the statistical tools and reasoning necessary to produce solid empirical investigations of a variety of programs/policies as well as to read the evaluations of others critically. The class used a lecture format and emphasized real world applications, with homework assignments that involved using Stata to conduct regression analysis.

Course Aims: 

1. Become a critical consumer of empirical research and be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of research output;

2. Use regression analysis to thoughtfully investigate real-world policy questions;

3. Become comfortable with programming in Stata and working with datasets, more generally.  

As a TA, I held weekly office hours, hosted mid-term and final exam review sessions, and graded all homework assignments. For each assignment, I provided the lead professor with an overview of class performance: see examples here. 

Unfortunately, as I took over the TA role for this course one month into the semester, I was not set up in the system to receive course evaluation feedback from students (see evaluations for PAI 721, a similar course, below).

PAI 721: Introduction to Statistics (Fall 2021)

The primary purpose of this graduate-level course is to introduce the basics of modeling and analyzing problems that involve decision-making under uncertainty. Students learned how to choose the appropriate statistics to examine given a particular problem, how to avoid being misled, how to communicate statistical findings, and became familiar with using statistical software to apply class concepts to real life data and scenarios.

As a TA, I held weekly office hours, hosted mid-term and final exam review sessions, and graded all homework assignments. For each assignment, I provided the lead professor with an overview of class performance: see examples here. 

Course Evaluations: While only the professor received quantitative feedback, four students highlighted my work as a TA when responding to the open-ended question: "What, if anything, did you find useful in this course?"

• "The TA Anna was an incredible help in this course! She was a wealth of knowledge and had a better way of explaining the material for me than the teacher. If it wasn't for Anna and the time she put in I would not have been successful in this course."

• "The outside help from both the professor and the TA were extremely helpful to me, and were both so open in finding a time that worked with me."

• "I would like to thank the TA for this course - she is amazing and supportive."

• "The professor was really good at answering any questions students had and making herself available outside of class to help students. Anna, the TA, was also really helpful."

ECN 410: Economics of Family Decisions (Fall 2020)

This undergraduate population economics course helped students gain an understanding of the economics of the family, including global and national demographic tends and the theories of demographic change underlying these trends. The course covered four key topics: marriage, fertility, mortality, and migration - at both the individual and household level.

As a TA, I graded all homework assignment and exams. I met with the lead professor to develop a rubric for grading each exam (see example here).

Course Evaluations

Tutoring

In addition to working as a Teaching Assistant, I have served as a paid tutor (by the department) within SU's Executive MPA program for the course "Fundamentals of Policy Analysis" (taught by various professors - see example Syllabus). This entails holding regular drop-in office hours, as well as scheduling individual sessions for students that need additional help completing course assignments or studying for exams. 

I have also regularly taught an all-day "Math Camp for Policy Analysis & Microeconomics" for SU's Executive MPA program (see slides and exercises). This takes place prior to the start of the Fall semester, and serves as a foundation for these students, who are taking a mid-career break to pursue their MPA. Accordingly, many have not been using algebra or geometry in their day-to-day professional lives and are in need of a refresher to gain confidence for their upcoming courses.