I was a first-generation college student, born to a secretary and a department store merchandise buyer in Washington, DC. When I was three years old, my parents moved us to a small, rural town in Maine, where I spent the remainder of my childhood. My parents were avid readers. I picked up the habit at an early age and learned about people, places, and things that were far different from those of my immediate environment. While I didn’t know why these differences existed, I wanted to encounter them first-hand, which I knew meant leaving a community where people had an insular culture and limited horizons. College presented an avenue for accomplishing that.

My studies at MIT  taught me that effective problem-solving requires the critical analysis of data, and that testing, failure, and iteration are inherent to learning. As a doctoral student at the University of Hawai'i, I learned how to examine real-world phenomena from multiple perspectives, build evidence-based arguments, and effectively communicate my findings to a range of audiences.  

My research can be divided into three baskets. First, my Ph.D. program trained me to be a subject matter expert on rural development in Southeast Asia, an interest that expanded over the years to poverty and political instability generally. Second, I have evaluated so-called high impact pedagogies like simulation and gaming, project-based learning, community partnerships, and flipped classroom course design. Most recently, I've been exploring the coming transformation of higher education.

Outcomes of my research can be found on the selected publications page of this website.

My teaching is guided by a few underlying principles. First, I am personally familiar with the transformative potential of higher education and know the barriers that many people face when trying to access it. I therefore design my courses to be accessible to students regardless of background.

Second, I deliberately use an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate that complex topics can be analyzed with a variety of tools and that asking the right questions is often more useful than quickly landing on a single answer.

Third, I emphasize skill development rather than just content knowledge. Students benefit from acquiring skills that can be applied beyond the confines of the classroom; for example, forecasting, the use of geospatial data, and report writing.