My primary objectives as a teacher are to balance the goals of student success and participation in civic life. Student success has both narrow and broad aims: from the comprehension of course materials to the development of skills, and from passing the class to creating conditions of academic success in the future. Teaching philosophy, I focus on critical reading and thinking skills, including argument evaluation and (re)construction, as well as reflection on personal values.

This requires prioritizing skill-based teaching, rather than content-based teaching. In the latter, the emphasis is on covering and retaining the material, a feat usually accomplished through memorization and tested via exams. The former conceives of working through the materials as a means of skill-building. These skills include critical reading and thinking, clear communication, argument construction, and paper writing. These skills transcend any particular discipline and are important not merely in the university classroom, but in participation in civic life more broadly. In addition to this focus on skills, I have the responsibility to orient students to ethics and philosophy as a distinct academic field. I do this by focusing on key debates, figures, and texts that come from a diverse set of voices. With respect to teaching in a clinical setting, I aim to sensitize the audience to the relevant ethical issues that may arise.

I aim to promote diversity in the classroom, both in terms of the authors we read, the topics we engage with, and in meeting the needs of students. For instance, since I learned that a wide variety of more frequent and smaller assignments promote the success of a diverse student body, I have amended course syllabi accordingly. I have also been experimenting with less traditional forms of content, from videos and podcasts to games and ethics bowl competitions.

I have a lifelong love for learning, and teaching allows me to realize this pursuit differently, by growing as a teacher, developing pedagogy, and participating in the learning experiences of others.

This class presents the unique challenges of discussing a broad range of professions in a way that is engaging for students with a broad variety of aspirations. The course begins considering theories of happiness and justice in relation to work. It asks students to reflect on what happiness means to them, the role of happiness in work, the nature of justice, and the relationships that exist between these. Subsequently, we look at moral features of a variety of specific professions, including journalism, medicine, the law, and education. We discuss confidentiality, trust, the nature of a good professional, and the role of love in education, and how these issues generalize to other professions. Students complete case studies, participate in group discussions, compete in an Ethics Bowl competition, and submit an original case analysis presentation.

Note: Due to the fully online nature of this course, the Syllabus is fully integrated into Canvas. The PDF of the syllabus has been generated straight from Canvas and therefore lacks traditional formatting.

This course was initially developed for the Summer 2020 semester. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, courses had to move online. My previous experience with online education allowed me to respond quickly to this need by building a brand new online education course in the necessary timeframe. Due to the success of the course, it was slated to be included in the College of Arts and Sciences online education program. To this end, it was updated during the Fall 2020 semester, in partnership with O'Donnell Learn.

The course generally runs as a fully online synch/asynch hybrid course. However, it was built to be available to other instructors and adaptive to their needs. As a result, the course can be run on a online, face-to-face, and a hybrid modality. It can be fully synchronous, asychronous, or a hybrid. And it's suitable for small and large enrollments The course is available to all instructors teaching PHIL244, and has already served hundreds of students.

Summer 2019

Philosophy is about the very human project of figuring out the world and the best way to live in it. In this class, we discuss a variety of moral theories and problems relevant to our place and time. One of the aims of this course is to get “unconfused” about the intuitions we have and why we have them. This requires serious reflection on the course texts, cases, as well as our society and ourselves. This worthwhile process allows us to better understand one another and contribute to our moral community. 

During this semester, we read very few primary sources on ethics theory, focusing on moral problems and working out particular ethics views based on our discussion of these. We focused on questions of individual versus social responsibility, developed case studies, and ended the semester with an ethics bowl competition. Topics included the problem of global poverty, reparations, disability ethics, and environmental ethics.

Spring 2019

While similar in content to the the Summer 2019 version of this course, during these semesters we read more primary sources on ethical theory at the front end. This allowed for in-depth conversations during the remainder of the semester. Here, the focus was on the relationship between various kinds of oppression and resistance, prioritizing the lived experience of those who experience oppression. Topics included the ethics of race, feminism, sexual violence on campus, media representation, and U.S. foreign affairs.

The goal of this course is, first, to familiarize ourselves with the foundations of philosophy and its various subfields. Second, to gain a solid understanding of some of the foundational texts, concepts, and methods in the discipline. Third, to use these foundational texts in Western philosophy to leverage a discussion of contemporary and non-traditional philosophical views. And finally, to apply this conceptual work in challenging classroom discussions and written assignments.

The course was set up broadly by the major fields in philosophy, where more theory-heavy topics were brought into the contemporary sphere by assigning videos and podcasts that tied them to their practical implications.

Ethics and Values has been staple of UVU's educational offering for decades. It's online offering has been very popular, and the online course has seen several iterations over the last 10 years. The pandemic coincided with the need for a course overhaul, and my 6+ years of experience in the course meant that I was ideally suited to facilitate the new build. I designed the new course during the Summer of 2020 and it was first employed that Fall. During the Summer of 2021 I made revisions based on student and instructor feedback.

The course runs as a fully online, fully asynch, large enrollment course. However, it was built to be utilized by a large number of instructors and is adaptive to their needs, in particular with respect to enrollment numbers. The course continues to serve 1000+ students per semester.

The course has continued to evolve over the years, primarily based on student and instructor feedback, as well as advance in generative artificial intelligence. A walk-through of the 2021 iteration of the course is available here.