Teaching Philosophy
Teaching is the opportunity to share the joy and passion of the
material with others who might engage in it. My goal is to connect
the students and the material through familiar applications showing
the value of lifelong application. Working with students to see
the material as something they will use every day, and probably are
without knowing it, gives them the motivation to live the material.
I learned the value of this connection by teaching at the University
of Baltimore. In my first two semesters, I used a research project,
culminating in a paper where the students had to explore the financial
or economic effects of a policy or program that interests them.
Research-based learning is excellent for methodological instruction,
and this has encouraged them to understand that finances and economics
underlie much policy.
However, I wanted to take my instruction outside the classroom. So
I led my graduate students as they applied their learning to make
Baltimore a better place. One semester, in a financial management
class, my students started a nonprofit from scratch. Most of an
organization’s startup is in financial management and accounting.
For a nonprofit, the start-up phase also includes managing tax-exempt
status, a nontrivial task. For many students, this service activity
will be the biggest community leadership opportunity they have had.
I was fortunate to have the department’s support and encouragement
in this unconventional approach to teaching financial management.
In all of my classes, I like to use specific examples from the real
world to connect the material to their life. In an undergraduate
mathematics course, this may involve something as common as
measurements for cooking or an analysis of a baseball player, a
popular topic in business mathematics. For graduate students, that
may involve taking their work and life and putting it into the
material. From a student running a transformation project at their
job to one planning a wedding, the connections exist when you look
for them.
Mathematics
I have taught undergraduate mathematics at the University of Maryland Global Campus since 2010, when it was called the University of Maryland University College. UMGC’s classes are primarily delivered via distance education, though some courses are “hybrid” including a weekly session on campus, usually at the University of Maryland, College Park. At UMGC, I routinely teach the introductory mathematics courses:
- MATH 106 Finite Mathematics A survey of basic business mathematics. This course includes an introduction to mathematical finance (loan and annuity modeling), simple matrix mathematics, linear programming, set theory, and basic probability.
- MATH 107 College Algebra A gentle introduction college-level algebra including equations, inequalities, graphing, and polynomial and exponential equations.
I have also taught other courses from the mathematics program:
- MATH 012 Intermediate Algebra A development course preparing students for one of the core college-level math courses listed above. This course introduces many algebraic concepts.
- MATH 108 Trigonometry and Analytical Geometry This course picks up where MATH 107 leaves off and adds trigonometric functions, analysis of triangles and other simple shapes. Some proofs are also introduced.
- MATH 115 Pre-Calculus This course is the contents of MATH 107 and MATH 108 in one semester!
- MATH 140 Calculus I Calculus I is the traditional first semester of calculus. The course teaches limits and derivatives, with a focus on graphing. Finally, this course introduces the integral and sets up Calculus II.
Finally, I have taught courses from our statistics program. We are now down to just STAT 200, but we previously had an array of thematically-linked statistics classes for business, social science, and computer science:
- STAT 200 Introduction to Statistics This is an introduction to applied statistics. Probability, t-tests, and [latex]\chi^2[/latex]-tests are introduced. Application areas are broadly selected from across many different fields.
- STAT 230 Introductory Business Statistics This is is essentially the same as STAT 200, but the examples are drawn primarily from business settings and include production and finance problems. This class has since been discontinued in favor of STAT 200, above, as a generalized statistics course.
Public Affairs and Management
The University of New Mexico
For the fall of 2022, I was invited to teach in the the University of New Mexico master of public administration program.
- PADM 596 Research Methods II: Data Analysis This course covers advanced statistics with a specific application to public management. One interesting feature of this course is an explicit Stata knowledge requirement.
Baruch College
In the Spring of 2021, I was invited to cover a course for the Baruch College public and international affairs programs in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs.
- PAF 503 Research and Analysis II This course brings forth more advanced research methods with focus on both national and international applications. We will be using Stata as the core statistical language in this course.
Central Michigan University
In the spring of 2017, I started occasionally teaching in the Master of Science in Administration (MSA) program at Central Michigan University. It may seem like a long commute, but my courses are taught at Joint Base Andrews, here in Maryland, through the Central Michigan Global Campus initiative. The MSA program is a degree in management focusing on technical administration, drawing on the course content common in both master of public administration and master of business administration programs. I have taught four different courses for Central Michigan.
- MSA 600 Foundations of Research Methods in Administration This course covers the basic research process starting with the scientific method, lit reviews, data collection, analysis, through to research writing. Through this course, a student is well-prepared to design and complete a research project in a government or business setting.
- MSA 607 Program Management in Complex Organizations This course is a unique course that looks beyond standard project management and looks at the interrelationships of projects inside large and diversified organizations.
- MSA 647 People and Project Administration This course introduces the nontechnical side of project management. It focuses on communication, principally with stakeholders and within the project team. From this course, students should be able to manage project risk better from a personnel standpoint.
- PSC 516 Environmental Politics and Policy This course explores the nexus between the environment and policymaking. We are going to look at the applications of politics to environmental questions, how the environment plays into larger political questions, and explore how to communicate environmental concerns in the policy context.
The Pennsylvania State University
In the fall of 2018, I was invited to cover a course for the Penn State master of public administration program.
- PADM 503 Research Methods Like MSA 600 at Central Michigan, this course covers the basic research process with a specific application to public management. One interesting feature of this course is an explicit SPSS knowledge requirement.
University of Baltimore
During the spring of 2014, the University of Baltimore’s School of Public and International Affairs invited me to teach in their master of public administration program. I taught for the following three semesters and taught courses over two years from the budgeting and fiscal administration track:
- PUAD 701 Public Administration and Public Finance This course will consider the economic impacts of governmental policies, especially at the state and local level.
- PUAD 702 Public Financial Management A discussion of public financial management, including debt management, accounting policies, performance management, and accountability. This discussion should extend beyond the introductory graduate-level course on budgeting.
Image by Luke Jones.