I have taught three Economics courses at SMU, as the sole instructor on record for two sections of undergraduate Intermediate Microeconomics (Price Theory) and one section of undergraduate Health Economics, which focused on health care markets and insurance. I have also been a teaching assistant for Econometrics courses at all levels (PhD, masters, and undergraduate), MBA level Managerial Economics, undergraduate level Economic and Business Forecasting, Environmental Economics, Economics of Human Rights, Strategic Behavior, Money and Banking, Principles of Economics, and International Trade. I would be interested in continuing to teach Health Economics and Price Theory courses, as well as designing courses in Labor Economics, Economics of Education, Econometrics, and Public Health at both the graduate or undergraduate level. I can teach any topic at the undergraduate level where there is need by the university.
I emphasize and incorporate the following three evidence-based approaches into my teaching practice:
Active Learning and Peer Instruction: I intentionally incorporate classroom assignments and activities which require active engagement by the students in their learning. For Intermediate Microeconomics, I blended problem-based learning with a think-pair-share activity for each lecture. The final 20 minutes of a class are reserved for students to work together in groups on practice problem based on the concepts they just learned and one student group volunteers to share their work for participation points. In my Health Economics class, student groups facilitated ‘peer led symposiums’ in which they chose an approved Health Economics paper from the Journal of Economic Perspectives and delivered a discussion-based seminar for the class.
Accessibility for a Diverse Classroom: Students have widely diverse backgrounds, and those backgrounds affect their starting point when entering the classroom. I am intentional in using inclusive communication, such as sharing my pronouns when I initially introduce myself to the students. On the first day, I ask students to fill out a small private notecard with their name, pronunciation, pronouns, and anything I need to know about them that could require accommodations (such as a disability, student athlete, being a parent to a young child, etc.). I incorporate wait times when asking questions and use them to provide space for quieter students to deliver answers. In particular for longer classes, I work to separate lecture time with breaks and activities which allow students with attention disorders to reset their focus.
Providing Exposure and Breadth to the Broader Economics Discipline: Students often come into an Economics classroom with misguided ideas about the field, which can often discourage underrepresented groups from further pursuing economic study. I work to be proactive in offering information about the breadth of the economics field. In the classroom, I incorporate a diverse range of ‘real-world’ economic research into the lectures, problem sets, and essay assignments. For example, in each problem set for Intermediate Microeconomics I included an assigned reading excerpt which demonstrated an application, or ‘real-world example’, of a theoretical concept from the class and required the students to apply what they had learned in class to a simple ‘real-world’ setting. In my Health Economics class, I apply the ‘case method’, assigning a research paper which evaluates a semester long-reading.