Learning Through Research and Practice

I view teaching as an opportunity to help students become thoughtful institutional leaders capable of understanding, improving, and designing organizations that expand opportunity and strengthen society.

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The classroom is not simply a place where knowledge is transmitted. It is a community where students learn how institutions function, how relationships shape collaboration and coordination, and how people with different experiences and perspectives can contribute meaningfully to shared work. My goal is to help students connect rigorous scholarship with practical leadership, developing both analytical skill and the capacity to navigate complex organizational challenges.

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My teaching emphasizes three complementary goals.

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First, I help students build strong conceptual foundations. Drawing on organizational sociology, organizational theory, leadership, civic studies, and related disciplines, I encourage students to move beyond individual explanations for organizational problems and instead examine how structures, relationships, incentives, and institutional arrangements shape organizational outcomes. My courses emphasize reasoning, conceptual clarity, and interdisciplinary thinking.

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Second, I support learning by applying scholarly theory to practice. Students engage real organizational challenges through teaching cases, simulations, research projects, practitioner collaborations, and organizational fieldwork that allow them to test, interpret, and extend scholarly ideas in applied settings.

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Third, I view higher education as preparation for institutional leadership. My goal is not simply to help students understand organizations but to help them become leaders capable of strengthening them. This includes cultivating intellectual humility, analytical rigor, collaborative problem solving, and the capacity to work constructively with people whose experiences, identities, values, and expertise differ from their own. I want students to leave my courses better equipped to contribute thoughtfully within the institutions they inherit, and to improve those institutions over time.