Teaching and Advising

Recent Courses

I regularly teach courses in ethics, biomedical ethics, feminist philosophy and (less regularly) epistemology. Here are some recent syllabi:

Undergraduate

Philosophy of Sex, Gender and Race (Spring 2022)
Morality and Justice (Spring 2021)
Biomedical Ethics (Fall 2020)
Ethics of Disability (Spring 2019)

Graduate

Individuals and Oppression (Fall 2022)
Ethics of Belief (Spring 2022)
Moral Luck (Fall 2020)

Teaching Training and Resources

I employ a skills-based approach to teaching. For example, rather than assume that my students know how to write a paper, read a piece of philosophy, provide useful peer feedback, conduct independent philosophical research, or submit their work to conferences, I teach these skills explicitly in my classes. Here are some of the handouts that I use to teach philosophical skills:

An assignment prompt for a 'four-paragraph essay' (adapted from Dennis Earl's four-sentence paper assignment)
A handout on how to give peer feedback on a long abstract (graduate-level)along with a marked-up sample long abstract
A handout on how to give peer feedback on a draft outline (undergraduate level)
A beginner's guide to philosophy conferences (graduate-level)

In 2021, I worked with Philip Yaure and Daniel Hoek to design a graduate-level proseminar course for our MA program. Instead of being structured around a set of classic texts, the course is structured around explicit philosophical skills. Students learn how to conduct literature reviews, identify the 'lead papers' within a particular debate, write engaging introductions, and produce graduate-level philosophical prose. The first syllabus for the course (designed by Dan Hoek) is available here.

Just as philosophical skills can be taught, so too can we learn to be better philosophy educators. To that end, I organize and conduct ongoing pedagogy training in my department:

In Fall 2022, I organized a two-day philosophical pedagogy workshop with Dr. Kiran Bhardwaj. The workshop was generously funded by a Departmental Diversity Grant, and was co-sponsored by the Philosophy Department, STS Department, and Center for PPE.
Every year, I conduct a teaching orientation for new teaching assistants in our department. You can view the materials from the most recent orientation here.

I experimented with using Instagram as a teaching resource in the early days of the pandemic. You can read about this pedagogical 'technique' at the Daily Nous.

Graduate Advising

I am a very experienced graduate advisor, having supervised 19 MA theses, and having served on 38 MA committees in total. In addition, I advise students daily in my role as Director of Graduate Studies at Virginia Tech. Some recent topics of supervises include:

Moral encroachment and epistemic injustice
Anger and moral luck
AI and dementia care
The duty to resist oppression

My former students have been accepted to PhD programs at USC, UNC, Cornell, UCSD, the University of Chicago, the University of Arizona, Australian National University, Oxford University (DPhil), Boston University, UMass Amherst, and UC Boulder, among others.

If you're interested in working with me as an MA student, feel free to contact me at the email below.

Awards and Grants

In Spring 2022, I received two awards for my graduate advising:

In Spring 2021, I was nominated for an Excellence in Advising Award and a Teaching Award.

In addition to the Departmental Diversity Grant mentioned above, I have also received an Instructional Innovation Grant from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning to invite guest speakers to my undergraduate bioethics course. As a graduate student, I received a grant to co-design (with Thomas E. Hill) a research-intensive undergraduate honors course. I also received a Future Faculty Fellowship, which was awarded on the basis of pedagogical excellence.