UNBC Award of Excellence in Teaching (2014)
Teaching Philosophy
I believe that everyone has a desire to make the world a better place to live, for themselves and for others. I believe this desire drives our pursuit of knowledge and inspires us to learn. For me, as a teacher, to support this pursuit in students requires me to make the world of academics relevant to them at a personal level.
I believe that context is everything. Before students learn they must first understand where we, as a society, have been and who we are in the moment. Guided by these beliefs, my aim is to help students develop skills and acquire knowledge necessary for inquiry and for engaging as citizens of the world. By the time students complete my courses, I want them to know that they have choices, that it is possible to apply what they’ve learned outside of the classroom in order to make the world a better place.
It is not my intent to teach students what a better world looks like or what to do to make the world a better place. My aim is to create a classroom environment in which students discover ideas for themselves, explore new meanings and interpretations, engage in critical thought, gain respect for their own opinions, and get excited about asking “why?”. I encourage students to think about how their values and beliefs shape their questions and answers. I expect students to reflect upon their values and beliefs as the basis for completing assignments and participating in class discussions. Engaging students in classroom discussions is a priority for me. This makes lectures more active and more interesting. More importantly, I believe that classrooms provide an invaluable opportunity for students to learn from each other.
My teaching philosophy is consistent with my self-ascribed label of social philosopher. As I learn more about myself through teaching, I find more opportunities to draw upon my varied skills and experiences when preparing syllabi and facilitating in-class discussions. My background covers the broad areas of business development, economic development, and community development, in both profit and not-for-profit organisations. Among other things, I prepared business plans for small businesses, conducted market research, co-ordinated a youth employment project, managed a university recreation program, and more. These activities range from working with at-risk youth in some of Canada’s most challenged inner-city neighbourhoods to travelling North America as part of an international management consulting team. Through these activities I experienced the world from multiple perspectives and gained interpersonal skills to function well in each of them. In turn, I bring these perspectives to the classroom through a variety of readings and assignments and enjoy being open to what students have to offer.
Courses
NREM 110 Food, Agriculture, and Society
I have taught this course before as a ‘special topics’ course and used the teaching method in ENPL 205 Environment and Society. This course will be offered as a regular course in Fall 2019.
What makes my approach particularly unique is that I start the course without a course outline. Within the first two weeks of classes I engage the students to co-create the content of the course. The process begins with only the word “food” and ends with the students selecting their own topics for the course, which become the foundation for the course syllabus. The course is also led by students. Students form their own groups based on areas of common interests. Each group then research their self-selected topic, develop lecture materials (e.g., PowerPoint presentations), and deliver the lecture. To facilitate the development process and enhance learning opportunities, I meet with each student group outside of scheduled class time at least three times before the lecture, with each meeting lasting one to two hours. Based on informal feedback and course evaluations, students have told me they value this approach, while also suggesting that I be involved more in the delivery of content. I will continue to experiment with ways to accommodate student-centred learning with a more traditional approach to delivering content. I believe the two approaches can work very well together; it’s just a matter of finding the ‘right’ balance.
ENPL 313: Rural Community Economic Development
For this course, my aim is to prepare students for an entry-level position as an economic development officer. The foundation of the course is a semester-long assignment that requires each student, independently, to select a rural town of interest to them and complete a professional quality economic development report. All of the course assignments lead students through data collection and analysis in order to understand the structure and dynamics of their selected local economies. For the final report, each student must formulate and substantiate a set of realistic recommendations.
ENPL 319 Social Research Methods.
I remain committed to ensuring that students get the most complete experience of social research methods possible within a regular (3 SCH) one-semester course. For this course students complete a full research project as a group, including all aspects of research design and implementation, from selecting their own research question to collecting and analysing data, to preparing a final report. As part of the course students are required to meet with me to review their research proposals. This approach challenges students and requires a heavier workload for them (and me). Consequently, my biggest challenge is managing expectations, which requires a delicate balance of encouraging students to do their best for a research project that cannot be fully completed within the constraints of the course. To this end I continue to refine the language I use and make small changes to the structure of the assignments. As an example, I ask students to submit a draft research proposal, get feedback, and re-submit a final proposal. I used to “grade” students on the first proposal, but this often resulted in failing grades. I now refer to the “grade” as a progress report and informed students that they should expect their first draft to be 40-60% of the way to their final proposal. Students have responded well to this approach. Something I will try next time is to provide a week-by-week estimate of workload (from light to very heavy). I will continue to fine-tune this course in these ways so that students have better expectations of workload.
ENPL 410 Land Use Planning.
I taught this course for the first time in Winter 2011 for which I created a set of ‘real world’ rural land use planning case studies. The materials were designed specifically for this course. Over the years, I have dedicated a significant amount of time and energy to refine these course materials and will invest more time again. Each year I must review and update various statistics, verify links, and ensure that references to legislation are up to date. Based on feedback provided informally and through course evaluations, this course has become a very important “capstone” course for the students’ undergraduate degree in Environmental Planning.
NRES 802 Integrated Environmental Systems II
This course prepares students for study in the Natural Resources and Environmental Studies PhD program, which is an interdisciplinary degree that covers ways in which we think about and respond to issues of environmental conflict and resource management. For this purpose, I designed a unique assignment that requires students to examine interdisciplinary relationship between two journal articles. One article is from a natural science perspective and the other is from a social science perspective, with both related to their research topic. The aims are (1) to understand and articulate the ‘disciplinary’ perspective of each journal article; and (2) explore how these two ‘disciplinary’ perspectives relate to each other. It is through this comparative assessment of the two articles that students examine the ‘interdisciplinary’ relationship and consider the extent to which the authors of the two articles could work together (or not).