Teaching & Mentoring
Turning curious students into capable scientists
Transcripts document classroom experience. Just as much learning — often more — happens in the lab. My teaching is built to bridge the two.
Philosophy
Person first, then scientist
My lab runs on three pillars: community, skills, and career. They are not independent — community makes skill-building tractable, skills make a career trajectory possible, and a sense of where you are headed makes day-to-day membership meaningful.
The foundation is a person-first commitment: you are a person first, then a student among many other roles, and then a member of the lab. Research can be stressful, and I believe good science grows out of a community that takes its people’s well-being seriously. Mentorship runs in every direction — everyone teaches, and everyone learns.
Students learn to do science the way science should be done: openly and transparently, with preregistration, shared materials, and reproducible analysis. When mistakes happen, we talk about them and fix them — we don’t hide them. The goal is not just to produce results, but to produce researchers.
You are a person first, then a student, and then a member of the lab.— MAP Lab manual
Courses
In the classroom
Recent and recurring courses across the undergraduate and graduate psychology curriculum.
| Course | Level | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology of Perception (PSYC 4328) | Undergraduate | Sensation, perception, attention, and the science of how we build a model of the world. |
| Directed Research in Psychology (PSYC 4351) | Undergraduate | Mentored, hands-on research in the MAP lab — design, data, and dissemination. |
| Thesis (PSYC 5305) | Graduate | Supervision of independent master’s thesis research from proposal to defense. |
Mentoring
A pipeline, not a pyramid
Since 2016, more than 80 undergraduate researchers have trained in the MAP lab, contributing to 15+ peer-reviewed publications with undergraduate co-authors, more than 100 conference presentations, and numerous external research awards. Students routinely earn admission to graduate and professional programs across the United States.
The on-ramp is PREP — a free, self-paced program that gives students a realistic preview of research before they commit. New members begin by volunteering, shadowing experienced peers, and learning the craft before ever leading a project.
Graduate advising
Current students pursue theses on dyadic facial description and matching accuracy, and on facial-recognition technology and policing.
Recently chaired theses (2025–2026) span intellectual humility and political cognition; dual-task effects on ID verification; the role of color in facial identification; and social comparison, stress, and belonging.