Saint Michael's College

Title: Professor of Education

Education: A.B. Harvard University; M.Ed. Harvard Graduate School of Education; Ed.D. University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Areas of Expertise/Research Interests: Teaching for diverse learners; ethical, religious and spiritual dimensions of education.

Testimonial: You can get a great deal of personal attention from excellent faculty members here if you want it.

What do you like most about teaching/working at Saint Michael's College? I like the strong sense of community among faculty, staff and students and the atmosphere that encourages us all to talk about the ethical dimensions of education and about our sense of mission and purpose in life.

What do you like about Saint Michael's students? I like their interest in and support of each other. I like the balance that many have between respectful openness to new points of views and willingness to question them thoughtfully. I appreciate their desire to find a way to include a focus on academics with strong friendships and service.

What is your favorite class to teach, and why? One of my favorite classes is Pedagogy because it is a very challenging but ultimately rewarding class to teach. It is a required undergraduate elementary education class. The students must gain many skills and master many theories in order to create a month long thematic unit on a topic that interests them--and that they will some day teach. I see so much growth in most students over the semester which results in unique and interesting units that they are proud of. Another class I enjoy teaching is a graduate course on Spirituality and Education. I appreciate the diversity of perspectives that students (who are also teachers) bring to the class and the depth of class discussions as we explore many theoretical frameworks and personal interpretations. I often hear back from these graduate students that the course helped them to make changes in their classrooms that they feel are transformational in some way for their own students.