Every year I teach three sections of INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY. These are the largest classes on campus, with about 90 students per section. The primary goal of the course is to encourage students to think. To facilitate this, I use class exercise forms to guide small group discussion in groups of four. Every student is engaged in thinking, discussing, and writing. I then ask students to share their responses, which I write on the board and use to illustrate theoretical concepts. When I use this technique, the class comes alive and I find it very exciting.

Every day in my Introductory Psychology course, I wear a different item of foreign clothing, such as a shirt, T-shirt, jacket, or hat. I spend a few minutes at the beginning of each class period telling a story about the clothing. I use these personal experiences to introduce students to other cultures, since a major goal of the course is to understand other people's behavior.

I generally teach one section of SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY every year, which is cross-listed in both psychology and sociology. The course covers interaction patterns, relationship development, group dynamics, and identity formation and change. The course is usually "paired" with a course from another department, to meet a Liberal Education requirement. In a "pair," two professors from different disciplines identify themes in common and coordinate their syllabi. Students take both courses at the same time, and the professors sit in on each other's classes. This is stimulating to the professors, who are learning new topics, while providing a model of interdisciplinary dialogue for the students. It also facilitates discussion of teaching techniques, as the professors plan and evaluate their pairs.

In the fall of 1998 I created a new course called DIVERSE IDENTITIES. It examines theory and research on processes of identity formation and change, as well as first person accounts and films dealing with identity issues. Topics include ethnic, racial, national, religious, social class, geographic, school, occupational, gender, sexual, family, health, age, political, and other identities. The course analyzes stigma, prejudice, discrimination, and conflict from a global perspective.

I also teach one section of STATISTICS, which is designed for both psychology and sociology majors. A key component of the course is a computer lab which teaches students how to use the Statisitcal Package for the Social Sciences. For several years I also taught COMPUTERS IN PSYCHOLOGY, which I designed to introduce students to various software packages useful for psychology students.

For three years I taught a course entitled ≥WHAT IS REALITY?≤. It was an interdisciplinary course in the Whittier Scholars Program, in which students design their own liberal education and sometimes their own major. I taught it using a textbook on comparative world religions, supplemented by readings on social psychology and philosophy of science. It provided an opportunity to make cross-cultural comparisons of differing worldviews.

Before that I developed a course called LITERATURE REVIEW SEMINAR, which has subsequently been taught by other members of the psychology department. It teaches students how to write the 20-30 page literature reviews that are assigned in graduate seminars and which are the first chapters of masters theses and doctoral dissertations. The course teaches library search skills, how to analyze and compare journal aritcles, and how to outline, write, and present literature review papers. The seminar is required of all psychology majors, and according to an alumni survey is the most valuable course preparing students for graduate school. It became the central component of a program of Writing Across the Currilucum and a program of Research Across the Curriculum in psychology, in which students develop skills across their four years at Whittier College.