Teaching Philosophy

My approach to teaching is focused on process. I view the content of my courses

as a vehicle for teaching students how to think. I attempt to accomplish this in three ways.
One, I teach students to get excited about learning. Two, I teach students to think about
things from multiple perspectives. And three, I teach students how to ask and answer
questions to move forward with their ideas. I believe that these three interconnected goals
not only allow students to learn the specific content of my courses, but also to learn how
to think critically about any new information they may face in the future.
I am convinced that successful teaching starts by getting students excited about
learning. To do this, I show students how excited I am about learning. I recall that as a
student my interest was always sparked when professors were passionate about what they
were teaching. Now that I am the professor, I let my passion for what I teach show in the
classroom. This not only captures students’ attention (a necessary first step in successful
teaching), but it gives them inspiration to work hard and try new things in my courses.
Once students are “hooked” on learning, they are more open to thinking about
things in different ways. This is important because many students need to unlearn bad
mental habits from high school in which they believe that there is always one right
answer to a problem, one correct way to think about something. Because I see this
problem as a great impediment to learning in college, I use different ways to force (this is
not too strong of a word here) students to think about things from multiple perspectives.
In some classes, I explicitly teach students a conceptual framework for organizing and
approaching ideas: the 4 Dimensions Framework, a conceptual tool that I myself learned
in graduate school. In other classes, I teach students how to think and act like scientists.
In still other classes, I teach students to go beyond simply understanding concepts and to
make connections among ideas. Although students initially resist giving up old ways of
thinking and hesitate trying something new, those who accomplish this often finish my
courses feeling as if they have changed is some meaningful way.
Being excited about learning and developing a different way of thinking are not
ends in and of themselves. Knowledge does not move forward by these things alone. The
necessary final step is to use this enthusiasm and different way of thinking to generate
new ideas. The primary way that I get students to generate new ideas is to get them to ask
questions. I believe that advancement of all knowledge begins by asking good questions.
Although most students are more comfortable being taught answers, I have found that
under the right conditions, many students are exhilarated to learn how to ask questions.
For one, when students generate their own questions, they feel that the have actually
created something themselves, as opposed to having been given something by someone
else. This makes the learning process more meaningful for students. Two, if the question
is good enough, students can actually glimpse the larger process of how knowledge
moves forward in science. This glimpse allows students to appreciate how their work in
the classroom, library or lab is not that different from the work of scholars at the highest
levels of research. And three, because students are invested in their own questions, they
are open to being taught the appropriate way of answering those questions. Although the
appropriate way of answering questions is different in different fields, I believe that
question-based learning generalizes and makes students more open to learning different
ways of answering questions in any discipline.
In sum, I work hard to foster excitement, open-mindedness and curiosity in all my
students in the classroom and the laboratory. In my experience, these three qualities are
essential to the process of all learning and serve as the starting point for real intellectual
and personal growth at Colgate and beyond.