I teach organizational communication, research methods, and theory by connecting scholarship to decisions people make at work and in everyday life.
A supervisor communicates differently than you do. An organization’s stated values clash with its practices. An AI tool gives an answer no one knows how to verify. I often begin with a problem like these, then ask students to use theory and evidence to explain what is happening.
I build assignments in stages so students can test an idea, get feedback, and revise it. As someone who learned to navigate academic expectations as a first-generation student, I want those expectations to be clear enough that students can challenge them and make the work their own.
In organizational communication, students interview working professionals and analyze their experiences with course concepts. In global communication, they follow a multinational organization and write a comparative white paper. At Cincinnati, client teams develop a public relations and corporate social responsibility packet for a local organization, with feedback before the final pitch.
In research methods, students move through small studies using surveys, experiments, qualitative approaches, and content analysis. With support from a Designing Learning with AI grant, I added exercises that ask them to check AI claims against original sources, document where a tool helps or misleads, and reflect on ethical use.
In advanced theory, graduate students rotate among three roles: synthesizing a body of readings, presenting an article in conference style, and writing a journal-style peer review. The roles give students different ways to reconstruct, question, and extend a theory together.
Undergraduate and graduate courses in organizational communication, image and issue management, and theory.
An online course on the theories and everyday practices through which people organize work.
A client project and current organizational cases connect ideas about reputation, identity, and response.
A graduate seminar in close reading, theoretical argument, presentation, and peer review.
These ratings cover courses I taught as instructor of record and sections where I served as a teaching assistant at UC Santa Barbara. On this five-point scale, 1 is Excellent and 5 is Poor, so lower numbers are more favorable. These scores give one view of student experience; I also use written comments and mid-quarter feedback when revising a course.
These are reported course or section means. Survey response counts are unavailable, so section means are shown separately without calculating an overall TA average. Cincinnati evaluations are not included.
Selected anonymous comments from end-of-term evaluations at UC Santa Barbara, grouped by what students noticed across instructor and teaching-assistant roles.
“I loved the way everything was structured! Your feedback was detail oriented and very helpful.”
COMM 1 · Spring 2026
“Did a great job of answering questions and giving feedback. I was quite confused at the beginning of this course but he did a great job explaining exactly what our paper was supposed to be about.”
COMM 88 · Spring 2025
“He encouraged us to talk to each other and engaged with us when he asked questions. Those really helped make connections and helped us as a group brainstorm the concepts related to communication.”
COMM 1 · Spring 2026
“I really enjoyed your use of group participation in creative ways. It was rare to have a class day that I did not engage in the course material in meaningful powerful ways.”
COMM 122 · Summer 2024
“Thank you for all of the help and feedback you gave to us in the six weeks! I enjoyed the process of building our group project.”
COMM 122 · Summer 2024
“I thought this course was really engaging and interesting. I enjoyed the lectures and the activities we did during class. I thought the format of the course was good, and I ended up learning a lot this quarter.”
COMM 131 · Summer 2023