Teaching Style and Goals:
I would describe my teaching style as highly interactive and varied. I strive to make each class session a unique experience. This mixed-bag approach keeps students engaged throughout the semester. Several courses I have taught use service learning, experiential learning, or high impact practices to get the learner out of the classroom, where the best lessons are found. Below I will outline a few courses I have developed that I find particularly rewarding to teach.
I would describe my teaching style as highly interactive and varied. I strive to make each class session a unique experience. This mixed-bag approach keeps students engaged throughout the semester. Several courses I have taught use service learning, experiential learning, or high impact practices to get the learner out of the classroom, where the best lessons are found. Below I will outline a few courses I have developed that I find particularly rewarding to teach.
Political Violence
Why do civil wars occur in some countries but not in others? What are the costs associated with civil war? Why does political violence occur in the first place given that it has disastrous implications for human and state security? This course will seek to answer why the many modalities of political violence occur in particular places, at particular moments. We will investigate civil war primarily but we will also examine: ethnic conflict, riots and anti-regime protests, genocide, terrorism, and other forms of violence. The course will draw heavily on recent political science research findings. The course provides students with a set of tools for the analysis of contemporary conflicts and shows how evidence and theory can be effectively used to understand peace and conflict. It also gives students a practical understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to conflict resolution and peace-building.
Student Learning Outcomes
After completing this course, students will be able to:
Student Learning Outcomes
After completing this course, students will be able to:
- Describe political and social contexts that are likely to generate or at a minimum, facilitate political violence.
- Describe the historical and modern forces that contribute to political violence.
- Understand the leading theories on violence.
- Deliver a professional presentation.
- Identify major “hotspots” of political violence around the globe.
- Understand the disastrous impacts of political violence on human and state security.
- Assess empirical research on its strengths and weaknesses.
- Produce an analytical paper.
Outflows: Understanding the Refugee Crisis (high impact, experiential learning course)
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), “nearly 1 person is forcibly displaced every two seconds as a result of conflict or persecution” globally. Given this startling fact, it is imperative for global citizens to understand the root causes and effects of refugee outflows. This course will explore why refugees leave their home countries in the first place, the process of resettlement, and the ongoing difficulties of assimilation.
Beyond the intellectual exercise of understanding the refugee crisis, this course seeks to highlight the human element of this systemic issue. In order to accomplish this goal, students will help teach citizenship classes at Kentucky Refugee Ministries. This experience will allow students to interact with political refugees and hear more about their stories. Students will also read two novels that seek to tell the human story of the refugee crisis.
Course Goals:
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), “nearly 1 person is forcibly displaced every two seconds as a result of conflict or persecution” globally. Given this startling fact, it is imperative for global citizens to understand the root causes and effects of refugee outflows. This course will explore why refugees leave their home countries in the first place, the process of resettlement, and the ongoing difficulties of assimilation.
Beyond the intellectual exercise of understanding the refugee crisis, this course seeks to highlight the human element of this systemic issue. In order to accomplish this goal, students will help teach citizenship classes at Kentucky Refugee Ministries. This experience will allow students to interact with political refugees and hear more about their stories. Students will also read two novels that seek to tell the human story of the refugee crisis.
Course Goals:
- Awareness of social context –
- Through the examination of push and pull factors that drive migration.
- Through interacting with clients at KRM.
- Written Communication –
- Through reading reflections.
- Oral communication –
- Through final presentations.
- Through interacting with clients of KRM and teaching citizenship class.
- Through discussions with peers.
- Critical Inquiry –
- Through final presentations.
- Through discussions in class.
- Creative exploration -
- Through final presentations.
- Through various in class activities.
High Impact Learning, Teaching Effectiveness
The Outflows course represents one effort to integrate high impact teaching methods into my courses. Below are student reflections from this course. From these narratives, it is clear that the learning objectives in this course were achieved.
Reflection #1
Dear pre-Centre Term Student,
I can’t even begin to explain how much you will learn in the next three weeks. Your understanding of yourself, of others, and of the world are going to change in ways you don’t expect. Right now, you don’t know much about the refugee situation. When you think of refugees, you think about the MSF account that you follow on Instagram and how it has always been a goal of yours to work in the medical field in areas of the world in crisis. You think about pictures of overcrowded refugee camps from the news. You don’t understand why the world allows those situations to happen and the impact of them on an individual level. But you will.
In three weeks, you will have a more complete knowledge of the complex factors that increase the risk of civil conflict. You will understand the political science concepts behind bargaining between state and non-state actors. You will better understand the inner workings of refugee camps and the government policies that influence resettlement.
But most importantly, you will understand individuals. You will cry when reading the stories of Doaa and the real people in City of Thorns. You will meet KRM clients that entirely change what you thought you knew about how refugees act, the most influential being Tee. He will cheerfully tell you about why he loves living in Lexington, and about driving to see his mom in Washington DC. You will joke about how your moms are one and the same and how you both wish Kentucky had warm beaches and how he wants to visit China one day. You will find common ground with this man who is friendly and upbeat and talkative.
You will also hear about the parts of his world that you will never see or understand, and that you wish he never had to. He will tell you about the violence and victimization he saw at the age of 12 in Sierra Leone when leaving Liberia. He will tell you about his new fears in the United States: racism and police violence. He will tell you about encountering child soldiers in his home country and how he knows he may never go back. You will be frustrated on his behalf, because you want to somehow make his situation better or easier and you feel powerless to do anything.
But you are in a powerful position. You are a first year college student with so much more to learn. You will get the opportunity to learn about the refugee crisis and civil conflict as a whole and the child soldiering aspect that is inherently connected. You will wish everyone in the country could take this class, and if you were to teach them anything that you learned, it would be about the need for greater resources within the camps and about empathy for refugees both in camps and in our own country. The combination of scholarly literature that explains the mechanisms behind real world situations and personal hands-on experience with those who have their own personal connections to various conflicts creates a comprehensive learning experience that’s like nothing you’ve had before. That mix will be the foundation for a more holistic understanding of the crisis. You will understand state capacity and the necessity of capable states to provide both financial aid and their own resources to this crisis. You will strongly disagree with the lowering of the refugee ceiling the minute you read about it, and will know that your country has a responsibility to take in refugees. The United States has the kind of state capacity that can sustain a higher refugee population, but doesn’t. The United States also has a hand in a lot of the civil conflicts that you will learn about, especially in threats of communism. It will line up with what you know about the history of American foreign policy. It is a story of greed and self-interest, with continuous overstepping of boundaries and disrespecting state sovereignty.
On the second to last day of presentations, your professors will raise a question that will combine your interests in the refugee crisis, healthcare, and environmental studies. What is the effect of natural disasters on civil conflict and refugee outflows? You know that natural disasters are increasing with severity due to climate change. What impact will that have on international politics and available resources? You will discuss the impacts on the bargaining model, but want to do further research. There is a gap in the literature, but it would be hard to find anything conclusive. You could case study Guatemala due to the earthquake they experienced. Good thing you love taking Spanish classes.
This class will open a new avenue of study that you didn’t know you had a passion for. Taking more classes in international studies will be a new goal of yours. You will talk about your class with President Roush and his wife Suzy and they will tell you that that is the beauty of liberal arts education. You may wish to major in biochemistry, but now maybe you can minor in international studies too. You already have hands-on experience with the citizenship process and an understanding of the American policies that limit opportunity of people from other countries. Whatever you do in the future, you’ve always wanted to help others and now you see a new way to do so.
You will not regret taking this class in the slightest. It will be the most interesting and eye-opening course you will experience in your Centre career so far. What you learn and more importantly who you meet will be unforgettable and will influence you long after Centre Term ends.
I would do it all over again if I could.
Sincerely,
Current Student
Reflection #2
Even before taking the course, I have been aware of the struggles and squalid living conditions that refugees have to suffer from. However, “The Global Refugee Crisis” has really helped me have a more informed, comprehensive insight into what refugees actually experience during their everyday lives; how physically and mentally exhausted they can get, for example, was outlined vividly in the two books that we read for the course, “City of Thorns” and “A Hope More Powerful Than The Sea”. Throughout the course, I have been able to learn more about the complexities and paradoxes implicated in this refugee crisis, thus better understanding why it is so hard to effectively allocate resources to refugees in camps, and to resettle them in more peaceful countries or to repatriate them post-conflict. I have learnt how influential a role politics and religion, for instance, can play in the creation of refugees itself or in subsequently dealing with the issue. It is with this knowledge that I hope in the future I can devise solutions effective and encompassing enough to help alleviate this worldwide human suffering.
To be honest, during my time in the KRM’s citizenship classes, I was impressed with almost every client. The first ones that left a lasting influence on me were Horace and Anmie. Both of them originally came from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country famous for being the battlefield of the “African World Wars”, and for the ever-unstable social situation ever since the end of those wars. The rather short span of time I spent with them as part of the course did not allow me to really know about their personal struggles, but I still managed to notice that their limited proficiency of English is creating further difficulty for them even when they had set foot on a land of peace. I have a feeling that maybe it was also their limited ability to use English that had hindered them from sharing their stories with me and other volunteers there. My interaction with them only reinforced my belief that the recent emphasis on English proficiency as part of the citizenship test was unfair. Besides Horace and Anmie, Maria was another client that left a strong impact on me. Originally from Mexico, she has spent around 20 years in the US already. Unlike Horace, Anmie, and many other clients in the class, Maria’s English was already near perfection, probably thanks to the tediously long time she has spent here. Considering her high level of English, it struck me as surprising that to date she still has yet to obtain citizenship. This fact reveals to me the reality of the bureaucracy involved with all these testing and assessment processes, a reality that only further ostracized the poorer population of the pool of applicants. With what little information I know about the lives and struggles of these clients, I understand that if we want to create a more pleasant experience for them, changes need to be made to America’s attitude towards and understanding of migrants in general and refugees in particular. Xenophobic and racist sentiments are still rampant all across the country today, especially within the current political administration, making it increasingly hard for refugees to succeed in seeking asylum. I believe it is imperative that we be able to showcase the refugees’ personal struggles and aspirations for freedom, factors that were originally in play in the Pilgrims’ decision to reach for America, to the general American population - those that really need a change of heart regarding immigration issues.
All that being considered, it is of course never easy to immediately create a safer and more stable environment for refugees, especially when the US is not the only actor in play. NATO countries have featured heavily in many of the recent violent conflicts worldwide, most of the time as a way to proxy against Russia and its allies. The presence of a third party in these conflicts has evidently complicated and dragged them out into years of continuous bloodshed. As a natural result, more and more people have had to flee their homes, further escalating the refugee population. As someone who has lived in a country that was ravaged by a war with the US, and whose relatives fought, and died, in that war, I have come to learn how flawed, or even destructive, the American policy of “installing democracy” in countries deemed without it can be. Indeed, many Western countries have also been using democracy as a veil for their interference in other countries less economically developed and socially stable. The military interference becomes even worse when we consider the reality of many European countries turning refugees away in a fashion quite similar to America's. As we have discussed in our classroom sessions, the crisis can potentially be alleviated if states with higher capacities are willing to host more refugees.
Overall, I find the course highly innovative and captivating. I still hope to be able to find out more about the personal stories of KRM’s clients, but given the length of a CentreTerm course, it is understandable to me that I could not obtain more details about their lives. However, I do hope that more courses at Centre can adopt this exemplary combination of academic lectures, peer-led discussions, and community activities. The format of “The Global Refugee Crisis” is also helpful for dealing with complicated issues that require assessments from various aspects. I also feel grateful for the assistance and cooperation that I have received from both my peers and my professors throughout the course; communication barriers have truly been broken down. In conclusion, I am excited about the prospect of taking part in more courses like this in the future.
**names have been changed to protect privacy**
Evidence of Teaching Excellence