I have been the primary instructor for 4 classes. Below is my teaching philosophy, links to my class syllabi, and complete course evaluations.
I have been fortunate throughout my life to feel that I had a voice. This often took the form of asking questions, whether of my parents, coaches, mentors, or teachers, and engaging in conversations that pushed my understanding. I recognize that for many students this is not the case. Feeling empowered to speak up is essential not only for asking clarifying questions, but also for exploring ideas more deeply, giving feedback, and building confidence. As a teacher, I see it as my responsibility to foster an environment where every student feels heard and respected, regardless of their background or comfort level.
At the start of each course, I clearly lay out expectations. I ask students to be respectful, honest, punctual, and engaged. These same expectations apply to me. I come to class prepared, end on time, grade fairly, and treat all students with respect. I believe that modeling these behaviors helps establish a culture of mutual accountability and trust. It also creates a space where students feel comfortable participating, asking questions, and challenging ideas without fear of being dismissed.
I incorporate a mix of teaching methods to support various learning types. Nearly all my class notes are handwritten during lectures. As a student myself, I have found this to be the most engaging form of lecture and students have expressed appreciation for this, saying it also helps keep the lecture pace manageable. After silly ice-breakers that students roll their eyes at for the first few classes, I have found they are more eager to work in groups on in-class practice problems and discussions.
Adaptability is a core component of my teaching approach, and I rely on multiple strategies to adjust to the needs of each class. I conduct beginning and mid-semester feedback surveys to better understand how students are experiencing the course and to make real-time changes. I emphasize to students that their feedback not only helps future classes but also benefits themselves. Another example of adaptability is how I assess student understanding. I favor short-answer and open-ended questions over multiple-choice formats, even though they are more time-intensive to grade and often more challenging for students. I have found that when students anticipate open-ended questions, they try to learn the material more deeply rather than rely on test-taking strategies. Their responses also help me better identify where students may be struggling. Having the opportunity to teach the same course across two terms allowed me to put these lessons into practice, spending less time on curriculum development and more time refining how I present material and respond to student needs.
While I aim to provide all the resources and support I can, I make clear that students are responsible for their own learning. This approach has shaped much of my teaching, particularly for upper-level courses made up largely of third- and fourth-year students preparing to enter the workforce. I treat these students as independent learners and encourage them to take ownership of how they use lecture notes, recordings, review sessions, and office hours. However, after recently teaching my first introductory course I found early-stage students often benefit from more structured learning, such as more frequent assignments and required attendance to help foster effective study habits.
Across all levels, I’ve found teaching economics to be uniquely rewarding. I’ve taught introductory economics, intermediate microeconomics, and a trade and development course outside of my research area. Each experience has shaped how I present material and connect theory to application. In intermediate microeconomics, I especially enjoy showing students how abstract mathematical tools they may have encountered before, such as basic calculus, can be used to understand real-world decisions. I strive to extend this perspective to broader applications beyond coursework, so students can carry these tools with them after the semester ends.
I view teaching as a continuous process of learning, adaptation, and mutual respect. I look forward to designing new courses that reflect both student needs and interests. Above all, I aim to build classrooms where every student feels they have a voice, and the tools to use it.
ECON 311: Intermediate Microeconomics 🔗
Summer 2023
ECON 311: Intermediate Microeconomics 🔗
Fall 2023
*Received Charles B. Garrison Award for Excellence in Teaching
ECON 322: The Global Economy: Trade and Development 🔗
Summer 2024
ECON 201: Introductory Economics: A Survey Course 🔗
Spring 2025
Qualitative feedback:
ECON 311 302 (Summer 2023)
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the instructor (e.g., teaching style, time management, accessibility)?
I thoroughly enjoyed Trenton's teaching style. He offered office hours each day after our class meeting times that I found to be extremely beneficial.
The class was provided in a respectful and kind manner. The material executed in the course was an enjoyable challenge that the instructor passionately taught.
The teacher was great to learn with and was great about communicating and answering questions fast.
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the course (e.g., workload, content, technology)?
The course was decently challenging but made sense in the end
ECON 311 301 (Summer 2023)
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the instructor (e.g., teaching style, time management, accessibility)?
There is nothing negative that I can say about this course. Trent was great and really cared about students' success. After every class, he always emphasized to get help and to come to office hours. He is a phenomenal teacher and I hope to take more Econ classes with him in later semesters.
I feel like his in class teaching style better fits a larger class/a class with more energy. Wasn't a bad thing, the students just felt like they weren't as excited to be there as he was every day.
Everything he covered we ended up using which was awesome.
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the course (e.g., workload, content, technology)?
Class was well structured, especially for a summer class. The workload wasn't overwhelming yet still allowed me to learn.
Just about perfect.
ECON 311 001 (Fall 2023)
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the instructor (e.g., teaching style, time management, accessibility)?
Not allowing at least 1 excused absence for an 8 a.m. class is something that I did not like. I only missed 1 class and then because of that I got .5 points taken off my final grade. I luckily am within walking distance but with all the parking troubles for other people it's a little unfair to not give at least 1 free one to account for that.
I like your teaching style and I like how you explain the concepts that were in this course. I also like that you joked sometimes and had pictures of Polly.It was a good time having you as a professor.
Professor Marable was always available and ready to help. I appreciated his "partial-credit" attitude toward grading. And the cat photos are a bonus! (yay polly!)
Really cool dude. Down to earth. I like him better than most professors.
While the class is difficult, Mr. Marable made sure to engage everyone and provided various ways of explaining each topic to help with our understanding of the course. I liked his teaching style as following along with example problems and providing written explanations for each step of a math probleminstead of just showing us how to do the problem better engaged me in lecture and allowed me to get a better understanding of what I was supposed tobe doing.
I loved how the teacher took notes during class. He wasn't just reading through PowerPoints, he would solve everything out with us. Great teaching style and learning environment.
Great professor!
Great professor, was always super helpful with everything.
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the course (e.g., workload, content, technology)?
I wish the attendance policy was so strict as lectures were recorded, but overall it wasn't to worrisome.
I actually liked the problem sets because they helped me remember the steps to solve the problems and were similar to exams.
I really appreciated that there was little homework in general but that they were worth alot, and I liked that they all had the same type of questions thatwould show up on the exams. Your notes are also very good!
ECON 322 301 (Summer 2024)
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the instructor (e.g., teaching style, time management, accessibility)?
I feel like Trenton was very knowledgable and very passionate about the topics, but it was really hard to stay fully engaged for the full length of the class. Him asking us questions and responding in the chat encouraged people to participate but I think if it had been more consistent we would have beenmore incentivized to participate more often and really read and dig into the case studies.
I loved the way that this class was set up. I liked that he did the notes with us.
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the course (e.g., workload, content, technology)?
The course workload was fine, the proctored exams were annoying and longer than they needed to be (I felt). I did not like the proctorio stuff, especiallyhaving to scan my surroundings, it felt kind of invasive.
I think that it should be made clear from the start of the class that the quizzes are about things from the book and don't say that it is recommend to read the book, just that you should. I think that the final should not be cumulative or at least not have so many cumulative questions, I think it should mainly focus on the final chapters. Somthing that would be helpful could be having a list of things that we need to study not a practice test but a list of topics.
ECON 201 018 (Spring 2025)
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the instructor (e.g., teaching style, time management, accessibility)?
I wish the classes were a little more interactive because they are so long, like incorporating clicker questions or more canvas questions or something ofthe sort. I don't know if this is a university thing or not but having a class that long is awful no matter what the subject is; I would appreciate a second break or maybe getting out early. Another option would be to get rid of the attendance policy, while i enjoyed being in class, I felt that I did not necessarilyNEED to be in class.
When going through work problems that have references to pop culture, try to use terms that are a little bit simpler to understand. Using words like doohickey or whatchamacallit and confuse some students. Pop cultures are fine just don't use confusing words.
Great teaching style, easy to follow along
I love his teaching style and way to light up the room with jokes.
very personable and had a good attitude
The pet stuff and giving us breaks helped, the format of the class and time of day just made engaging difficult.
I enjoyed the teaching style and he responded to our comments about trying to make the class more engaging/easier for us to understand.
I really enjoy your teaching style and the fill in the blank note style that we have been doing the last half of the semester. I also really appreciate your grading style and the one sided page of notes that you allowed us to have for the exams because it helped us prepare and study for the exam without feeling too overwhelmed. I am really grateful for the dropped grades, but I have a suggestion about the dropped exam grade. I think it would be more beneficial to allow us to replace one of our first three exam grades with our final grade or opt out of the final if our first three exam grades were good enough. This would be more beneficial because if we do not do well on one of the three exams then we would have to relearn all of the content for the cumulativefinal rather than just being able to skip an exam and only study that content once for the final. I am not sure if that makes sense. Some of my other classes are like that, and it reinforces learning better in my opinion.
Good teacher, really tries to make things work for the students, very understanding and helpful
He's a really good teacher especially considering this is one of his first classes he's ever taught. This is one of the few classes I actually end up showingup to and enjoying even though I know nobody in it. He makes the content easy to understand and is a funny and easygoing dude. Very easy to reach out to and communicates very well plus the class is not too hard but also requires you to put in some effort which makes a good balance. Overall really enjoy his course even though I just need econ for my volcore.
Trenton was very open to all feedback about how he could best help us succeed. He also took responsibility for lack of content knowledge and made sure to make it up to us in class instead of docking points! Overall a great instructor!
I think that the time of the class could have been utilized a bit more effectively, just so that some sections of lectures were not so drawn out and otherswere not so rushed.
For a boring class Trenton made it enjoyable
Great teacher overall but could work on time management skills as sometimes the students suffered from his slowness like not finishing chapters thatwe were in an exam two days later.
Nice cats
good teacher for a grad student. I thought he was funny.
Fantastic instructor with good teaching philosophy. The idea of recording lectures and posting slides and lecture material helped a lot with keeping meup to date on information and were useful as a study tool.
Many people throughout this class were just bored on their phones because of how long it took to go over the info. I think we shouldn't go over labs in class because of how long and repetitive they are. Tyler struggled with time management frequently but when there's this much material who wouldn't, we had to skip an entire chapter for the sake of time. Tyler is a charismatic, decent professor who tries his best, with more practice and experience he willbecome a wonderful professor to have. He needs to gain some confidence and not be so easy on students who don't do their work on time, it encourages an atmosphere for them to not take the class seriously.
You did a great job teaching this semester. You tried to make things relatable and that helped in getting your message across.
You did a great job. Learned a lot!
Excellent approach to lecture and class engagement.
Sometimes presentations took too long, but would always get to them in the next class.
It got better as the semester went on but making sure we finished each chapter on time
Before every exam there was a zoom review session which was very helpful.
Mr. Marable is an excellent teacher. He is kind, organized, thoughtful, and very skilled at explaining hard economic concepts.
I loved your teaching style and the GRL program we used in class because it went hand in hand with your lectures. You always went in depth to explainnew topics of economics and provided many examples as well. You taught each economic topic very well and it covered all the key factors of economics that people need to know. I also I loved your personality and how cool you are.
Great instructor. He was very friendly and easy to reach out to for questions.
He is very understanding and a very good teacher.
I think Mr. Marable was a good instructor. He was kind and interesting to listen to.
This class would be difficult to teach but does a good job with it
I appreciate how the lectures were planned out. It was just hard to stay locked in for the entire two hours of the lecture. This lenght also made t so alot of information was consumed within one sitting which could be overwhelming depending on the topic.
He was my favorite teacher this semester, he made economics as fun as
Did a really good job for how young. Course organization was great
Is there any additional feedback you would like to provide about the course (e.g., workload, content, technology)?
The great river learning system and textbook worked well.
We've talked about in class before where when the iPad pen is writing slow. To compensate for that would be to limit the writing of sentences in class.Because it takes so long it takes time away from going over all the material in one class. If the pen is buffering fast then writing sentences is fine, but ifthe buffering is slow then I would recommend just filling in the blank with one word.
Class had the perfect workload
I really appreciate the survey you did mid semester. I also like your jokes and attempts to make this class fun. I would like to see the incorporations of current examples into the class.
I am not an eocn student in the slightest but this class wasn't too bad. If you did all the work and were present in the lectures then you would get a goodgrade.
It is not the professors fault, but this is a poorly scheduled class. Respectfully, a class that goes this late should not be two hours long. It discourages the students from being engaged in the class.
This class would be better as a shorter class, three days a week.
Not sure why we have a lab for Econ. Just seems like a money grab by the university. I know you have no say in the matter, though.
I loved the idea of writing notes on the screen and using canvas instead of clickers. The writing of notes helped keep me engaged rather than a sea of full slides.
Tyler hand-writing definitions took a lot of time, so i'd advise for powerpoint slides that reveal text as he lectures that way it is revealed gradually but notvery slowly. Instead at the end of lecture there should be 2-3 practice problems to review what we learned that maybe should be canvas questions. Thecanvas questions are a good idea because it keeps people engaged. The textbook for this course is wonderful.
Worked well for me.
Workload was reasonable.
Perfect amount of workload and I enjoyed GRL there were no issues for me, and the filled in notes that you would provide was my favorite because it isvery helpful. Labs were also very helpful on reflecting on my knowledge. 3 hour class was the only downside about this class. My favorite learning stylewas provided by you. I loved cat breaks as well. After class hours was n=beneficial to me because it gave me a chance to understand some topics that Ineeded reassurance on. One of my favorite teachers i've had.
Course was a bit confusing when it came to exam prep materials. There was a practice test and a review session and one didn't match the content on the exam.
The connent of this course is very helpful when it comes to understanding both macro and microeconomics.
I don't like GRL.
I like that the workload was easy to keep up with. I would keep the same format. I do not think the content in Econ 201 is super challenging so it was nice to not be overloaded with work and I could focus on other classes.
I thought the lab worksheets, lab homework, and GRL quizzes were beneficial for learning the content. I did not think the assigned readings were very helpful because most of it was exactly what we went over in lecture. Instead, I would suggest only having us read the material that we did not get to talk about in detail in class.