To me, what makes us truly persons, is how we come to our world without a predefined purpose or meaning. Rather - in stark contrast with a chair, or a chicken - we can choose to make ourselves who we decide we’re meant to be. I choose teaching, volunteering, parenting, and creativity to help everyone with our own Copernican Revolutions. I choose Psychology, life-long learning, and developing to foster my own metamorphosis, focusing on feeling gratitude, and volunteering to help others.

I’ve taught mathematics to underprivileged elementary and middle school students, physics at an all-girls high school, philosophy in college, and psychology to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. I have taught a diverse range of college psychology classes including intro, social, developmental, and cognitive, and I've taught special topics in education, infancy, and creativity. In my lab we study deep conceptual change through struggle - our creativity, moments of insight, quandaries with morality, and the power of teaching and parenting to transform our lives.

I teach Introductory Psychology (Psy-100) most Falls and we explore creative ways of finding out how we work and so many influences impacting us - biology, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, situations, and cultures.  Let’s struggle with profound personal questions like how come we can want something for ourselves so clearly, and yet be our own worst obstacle?

I teach Social Psychology (Psy-350) most Springs and we can explore how different people experience the same world. Let’s struggle with profound real-world questions, like why we typically despise being stereotyped, and yet so easily pre-judge others?  Most importantly, we can be scientific with Psychology, find light as we reduce our own group polarization, and disperse the heat of dogmas - whether left, right, or otherwise.

I hope we can learn and grow as we compare and contrast ideas with our own experiences, and find our paths into the future.

My door is always open to you, for thoughtful conversation, practical advice, or just talking.  Not for therapy - I’m not a therapist - but to share your struggles with somebody who's been through a lot too - spiritually between atheism & devout, intellectually across worldviews & academic disciplines, and emotionally.  I love you with all my heart, soul, & mind regardless of your ethnicity, gender, sexuality, identity, religion, politics, abilities, or anything else.  No exceptions.  And I mean it.  Sometimes I struggle keeping my heart open to those who disguise in ‘religion’ or ‘science’ their disgust for people like me or who disguise as ‘justice’ their hunt for what they see as ‘monsters’ like me. But struggle isn’t hate, or even apathy.  We can learn whether we share something in common or reach across divides.  I’m always happy to talk with you!

Over many years I've been developing online activities to help make Psychology concepts real and personally-relevant.  Sometimes students would like to share our activities with friends and family.  When other professors would like to do my activities, there's a hurdle: they need to recreate them for themselves in their LMS if possible, download responses, score with a spreadsheet, and provide students with their responses on slips of paper.  It’s a lot to organize and it takes time; it’s what I did for each activity each semester.  The Copernican Revolution Project is my effort to make activities available to everyone, everywhere - at least with internet access.  Each activity scores itself automatically with personalized results, provides a certificate of completion so students can get credit, and provides a summary about each activity so it's educational even if teachers don't have time to discuss it during class.  Once I complete the most essential parts so they work, I'll create pretty static web pages to showcase each activity and I’ll start sharing widely on social media.