Teaching
Source: Burtch Works Executive Recruiting. 2018. "Salaries of Data Scientists.” Emphasis mine.
The focus of my Introduction to Sociology class, The Science of Relationships.
Jenny Holzer. “PROJECTIONS: London, 2006.“ Text: “Children of Our Age” from View with a Grain of Sand by Wisława Szymborska, copyright © 1993 by the author. English translation by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh, copyright © 1995 by Harcourt, Inc. Used/reprinted with permission of the author.
Graduate Courses
I regularly teach our department’s graduate courses in quantitative and advanced quantitative methods. I design these classes as project-based seminars that invite students to try out different analytic techniques, apply them to a research question, and develop projects that pilot test theories they may ultimately develop into publishable work. Students have done this - examples here and here!
I have also developed and taught graduate elective seminar in political sociology.
Undergraduate Courses
The Science of Relationships
(Introduction to Sociology)
Sociology is the science of relationships between people and groups. We live through all kinds of relationships: neighbors, nations, friends, family, bosses, enemies, and strangers on the train. Sociology studies these relationships by focusing on everything from small interpersonal interactions to big institutions like schools and governments. My goal is to introduce students to the field and give them a set of tools to better understand relationships in their personal and professional lives.
Social Statistics
Data science needs social science. Sociologists often want to understand big trends across time, space, and groups of people. Statistics is a powerful tool for our research, but a blind faith in big data overlooks important questions about how knowledge gets made and how inequality happens. By focusing on an introduction to data science, this class provides students with the practical skills to understand statistics and bring it into conversation with sociological theory and method. We think critically about where and when these skills are best put to use, preparing students for careers where they will contribute meaningfully to teams working on applied research, analytics, and machine learning.
Politics in the Digital Age
From fake news to Facebook feuds, politics can seem like a big mess. In this course, we work to make sense of it. We cover classic and current work in political sociology that speaks to the big questions of the day, like how think tanks and lobbying work, how social movements happen, and whether people are becoming more polarized online. We focus on what sociology contributes to the study of political life and how the social sciences can inform and improve public policy. In this class, students will:
Improve their understanding of political institutions and civil society
Engage current events with evidence-based analysis
Research and write more effectively about matters of public concern