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Teaching Statement & Philosophy
As a teacher my objective is to encourage students to discover new ways of thinking, knowing, and questioning that allow them to engage creatively, critically, and cooperatively with complex challenges that are relevant to their everyday lives as students, citizens, creators, professionals, and community leaders. Learning, in my experience, is a process of transformation and an interpersonal product of exploration, introspection, incessant questioning, and self-directed critical thinking. Today’s students are more plugged in to digitally connected global culture than ever before. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to help students critically navigate this shifting cultural terrain. I regard the classroom as a place where both instructors and students are able to make discoveries, challenge each other, re-examine their assumptions, and enlarge the worlds they are exploring together. For me teaching demands openness, receptivity, mutual respect, flexibility, a sense of humour, and a willingness to pursue new learning discoveries when the unanticipated happens and new perspectives come into view. GRADUATE STUDENT SUPERVISION PhD Supervision: 2 (Communication & Culture) PhD Examination Committees (Internal Examiner): 2 (Communication & Culture) MA Graduate students currently under supervision: 0 MA Graduate students supervised (completed): 34 (ProCom) MA Graduate students currently supervised as 2nd reader: 0 (ProCom) MA Graduate students 2nd reader (completed): 25 (ProCom) MA Graduate student committees: 1 (Communication & Culture) GRADUATE & UNDERGRADUATE COURSES DESIGNED AND TAUGHT Research Methods (Directed Study) Masters of Professional Communication 2020 Winter, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON This course introduces students to the theories, methodologies and methods that take into account creative, humanities-based and social scientific perspectives. A second goal of the course will be to familiarize students with the research and information gathering process, with the use of library and library resources, electronic and online research, and creative and unusual research strategies. The third goal is to provide an introduction to the art of project design and the writing of proposals. Professional Communication: History, Theory, Practice (Graduate seminar/studio course – 25 students) Masters of Professional Communication 2017—present, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON This course examines how diverse practices of professional communication have evolved and merged into a defined discipline supported by a body of interdisciplinary research. Moving from past to present, we will investigate how the recent shift from traditional to digital and from local to global communication practices and processes has transformed the foundations of professional practice including strategic planning, ethics, and interpersonal, organizational and public communication. Looking towards the future within a media ecology framework, we will theorize the ways current and imagined techno-global communication practices may impact sustainability on social, economic, political, ethical, and environmental levels. Advanced Editing & Document Design (Graduate seminar/studio course – 25 students) Masters of Professional Communication 2013 Fall, 2014 Fall, 2015 Fall, 2016 Fall, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON This Graduate course gives students an opportunity to engage with digital and transmedia design as critics, collaborators, editors, and creators. Students learn how to "read visually" and to "see textually" in professional contexts by developing their capacities to interrogate, analyze, and generate image- and text-based products that innovatively respond to the needs of diverse audiences and clients. The course focuses especially on issues related to the field of design, the creative process, visual design principles and strategies, typographical style, and on creating persuasive documents and identities capable of mediating across analogue, virtual, and multi-media platforms. Communication & Culture: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Graduate seminar/studio course – 25 students) Joint Program in Communication and Culture 2016 Fall, Ryerson University & York University This course introduces a critical approach to the three symbiotic areas of the ComCult program at the graduate level: media and culture, politics and policy, and technology in practice. The course will explore each area in modules that concentrate on four aspects: history; philosophy; theory; and principle concepts or issues, with one week dedicated to each aspect in each area. The course readings represent a range of foundational theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of communications and culture. They are intended to introduce students to key debates in the field and to demonstrate the interdisciplinary evolution of the study of communication and culture. TEACHING EXPERIENCE: UNDERGRADUATE COURSES DESIGNED AND TAUGHT Theorizing Commuincation (4th year lecture course - 80 students) School of Professional Communication Ryerson University, Toronto, ON Visual Communication: A Critical Approach (3rd/4th year lecture course – 60 students) School of Professional Communication Ryerson University, Toronto, ON This 3rd and 4th year course examines how visual images persuade us to act and think. Students learn a vocabulary of visual meaning-making in order to examine the ways images can be rhetorical and persuasive within a professional context. Further, students learn how visual images manipulate and become manipulated by technology and an increasingly mobile and digital visual culture. Text, Sound & Image: Persuasion in the City (1st/2nd year lecture/multimedia course, 2 sections – 60 students) School of Professional Communication Ryerson University, Toronto, ON This course provides students with the analytical tools to understand the ways that text, image, and sound work together to create persuasive objects. Using concepts from rhetoric and linguistics, this course focuses on elements of design and shows how to identify the ways that text, image, and sound interact to create persuasive messages. Visual Communication: A Critical Approach (3rd/4th year lecture course – 60 students) School of Professional Communication Ryerson University, Toronto, ON Introduction to Visual Communication (3rd/4th year lecture/multimedia course – 50 students) School of Professional Communication 2013 Fall, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON This 3rd and 4th year course provides students with the theoretical, methodological, and practical tools necessary to critically engage with our image-saturated world. Students learn how to: 1) look closely at the persuasive power of visual communication as a cultural practice in order to examine how ways of looking and seeing inform, and even determine, ways of thinking; 2) contextualize our cultural emphasis on the visual dimension of communication through an understanding of historical debates about the power of visual phenomena; 3) examine the ways seeing (and being seen) change drastically over time in response to complex social contexts, ideologies, and technologies. Visual Communication: A Critical Approach (3rd/4th year lecture course – 60 students) School of Professional Communication Ryerson University, Toronto, ON Visual Communication and Culture (3rd year lecture course - 50 students) Communication Studies 2012 Fall, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON This 3rd year course examines the production, interpretation, and exchange of images, and image technologies, in order account for multiple "ways of seeing." Areas of discussion include early technologies of vision, the disciplinary origins of "visual culture," new media, virtuality, film, television, print, nature, automobility, flanerie, tourism, and surveillance. Digital Media and Culture (3rd year lecture course - 50 students) Communication Studies 2011 Winter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON This 3rd year course focuses on classic and contemporary literature in the area of digital technology and culture. Topics include virtual reality, digital photography, copyright, computer-aided design, and ubiquitous computing. This course reflects the emergent interest in these technologies and their implications for identity, political economy, society and culture. Technology and Society (2nd year lecture course - 70 students) Communication Studies 2011 Winter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON This 2nd year course engages the contemporary and historical interconnections between science, technology, and society. Areas of discussion include new media, online communities, war, sustainability, urbanism, and posthumanism. Visual Communication and Culture (3rd year lecture course - 50 students) Communication Studies 2011 Winter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON Digital Media and Culture (3rd year lecture course - 50 students) Communication Studies 2010 Winter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON Visual Communication and Culture (3rd year lecture course - 50 students) Communication Studies 2010 Winter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Waterloo, ON Digital Media and Culture (3rd year lecture course, 2 sections - 50 students) Communication Studies 2009 Fall, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON Visual Communication and Culture (3rd year lecture course, 2 sections - 50 students) Communication Studies 2009 Winter, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON Technology and Society (2nd year lecture course - 70 students) Communication Studies 2008 Fall, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON Science, Technology, and Society (4th year seminar - 7 students) Sociology 2007 Fall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB This 4th year seminar course in Science and Technology Studies (STS) examines the contemporary and historical interconnections between science, technology, and society. Areas of discussion include complexity theory, ecology and energy, and the history of technological theorizing. TEACHING EXPERIENCE: TUTORIAL INSTRUCTION Introduction to Visual Communication (2nd year tutorial, 5 sections - 25 students) Communication Studies Fall 2008, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON Global Capitalism and the Sociological Imagination (3rd year tutorial - 25 students) Sociology Fall 2004, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB Introduction to Film Studies (1st year tutorial, 2 sections - 25 students) Film Studies Winter 2004, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON Introduction to Film Studies (1st year tutorial, 2 sections - 25 students) Film Studies Fall 2003, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON Art and Society: Prehistory to the Renaissance (1st year tutorial - 25 students) Art History Fall 2002, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON Art and Society: Renaissance to the Present (1st year tutorial - 25 students) Art History Winter 2003, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON Evil and Its Symbols (1st year tutorial - 25 students) Winter 2001, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON Love and Its Myths (1st year tutorial - 25 students) Religion and Culture Fall 2000, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON |
