Hello! I’m a Visiting Instructor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Florida, where I teach courses in research methods and American politics. My current teaching position reflects the culmination of graduate work at UNF, where I completed my Master of Public Administration in Fall 2024. I earned Pi Alpha Alpha honors while balancing a full course load, research, and teaching responsibilities. I completed my B.A. in Political Science with a minor in History in 2022, becoming the first in my family to graduate from college.

Alongside my teaching obligations, I’m pursuing an active research agenda focused on American political behavior and political psychology—particularly how rhetoric influences candidate evaluations and vote choice. I’m currently a co-principal investigator on a conjoint experiment examining whether symbolic rhetoric or policy positions more strongly affect voter perceptions of moderation and extremism. The survey, deployed via Prolific and funded through an internal grant, collected responses from 772 participants and generated 4,632 observations.

To analyze the data we collected from our survey, I built a reproducible pipeline in R, which included transforming variables, analyzing sample characteristics, and estimating OLS regression models with standard errors clustered at the respondent level to account for intra-respondent correlation—which violates the independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.) assumption of OLS regression. I also incorporated interaction terms and conducted subgroup analyses to explore heterogeneity in treatment effects. To ensure that our findings are not vulnerable to model specification, I specified a Bayesian regression model with respondent-level random intercepts—functionally the Bayesian equivalent of clustered standard errors. This pipeline produced clean and intuitive visualizations using modelsummary and ggplot2. I’m currently drafting our manuscript for submission to a high-impact journal, with our results challenging some of the implicit assumptions surrounding political moderation and extremity in the political psychology literature.

These methodological strengths have translated directly into the classroom. During my final MPA semester, I was appointed as an adjunct and taught Research Design for Political Scientists. With just three weeks to prepare, I received an ISQ rating of 4.5/5 (4.73 trimmed mean) and a 41% response rate—above the department average. I returned to teach Research Design and Analysis in the Spring, and was offered my current appointment as a result of my teaching evaluations. I’m currently slated to teach through Spring 2026.

In addition to my academic commitments, I’ve served in leadership roles within both the university and the Jacksonville community. I currently serve as a mayoral appointee on the City of Jacksonville’s Taxation, Revenue & Utilization of Expenditures (TRUE) Commission, which advises the city council and mayor on fiscal policy. I’ve also held leadership roles in local politics and UNF Student Government, and have independently published three op-eds in the Florida Times-Union and one in the Tallahassee Democrat. I have ambitions to engage in public scholarship and the popularization of data science later in my career, so I see these experiences as preparing for those endeavors. 

I also come from a working-class background. Frustrated with overcrowded classrooms and a lack of academic support, I elected to earn my GED and relied on a Pell Grant to fund my undergraduate studies. I’ve had to navigate college while working full-time, learning institutional policies, seeking out resources and support, and balancing a full course load. These experiences continue to shape my teaching philosophy and public service—and they fuel my commitment to making political methodology and data science more accessible to students from underrepresented backgrounds, with a focus on poor/working-class and non-traditional students.

Looking ahead, I’m eager to continue advancing my research and teaching in preparation for doctoral study. My long-term goal is to pursue a Ph.D. in Political Science with a focus on American politics and political methodology, with the aim of securing a tenure-track position at an R1 university.