Email: jessmath at umd•edu
CV: /cv/jmathewson.pdf
BA: University
at Albany, SUNY (2004, Summa cum Laude, History and Political Science)
MA: University
of Maryland, College Park (2008, Government and Politics)
Dissertation Title: Occupied
with Democracy: How International Security Dynamics Affect Democratization in Occupied Territories
Dissertation Committee: George
Quester and Karol Soltan (Chairs), Virginia
Haufler and Scott
Kastner
Expected Defense: 2012
Courses Taught:
Research Interests:Occupations, Democratization, Alliance Formation, the Political Economy of Security, American Foreign Policy, Qualitative Methodology, Process Tracing and the Historical Analysis of Politics, Cognitive Macroeconomics, Pedagogy in the University Setting
Other Interests: Quantitative
Analysis of Sport, Social History, Photography,
Web Design, Vizualization of Information, Development and Evaluation of Learning Technologies
Introduction
In a modern democratic society, political knowledge and political empowerment go hand-in-hand. I consider it my responsibility as a professor of political science to transform undergraduates into autonomous, politically efficacious citizens. I fulfill this responsibility by constructing knowledge of the political world in a way that is meaningful to them. I assure that I am successful in this goal through constant contact with students and diverse assessment techniques—both graded and ungraded.
My students graduate with the tools to acquire information independently, objectively assess their own interests, evaluate said information against their interests, and act in a creative and productive manner that is best for both their society and themselves. In doing so, I assure that those who leave my classroom not only survive, but thrive, in their political environment.
 those who leave my classroom not only survive, but thrive, in their political environment |
Enabling and Empowering Citizens
In order to build political efficacy, I seek to construct an understanding of the following principles: 1) that politics affect every aspect of modern life, 2) that every individual has the ability to modify their political environment, and 3) that skepticism and objectivity are far more useful than dogma and ideology. I aim to build awareness of the many ways one can effect political change: passive and active, formal and informal, legal and extralegal.
Consequently, I challenge students to broaden their definition of what politics is and how it affects them. I ask them directly to evaluate how politics affects every moment of their day, and what political dynamics affect their leisure, professional, and family lives. In class and through one-on-one consultation I seek to uncover preconceptions, urging students to recognize and question the assumptions therein.
I find that this approach reveals new and shocking political dynamics that they would never conceive in their original mindset. I have found success in this area by building classes that are diverse in media and assessment, by relating abstract concepts to current events and everyday life, and by remaining flexible to modify class content should the need arise.
| I challenge students to broaden their definition of what politics is and how it affects them |
Reaching Students on the Individual Level
The modern learning environment requires professors to compete for attention in and out of the classroom; successful professors use this fact to their advantage. I remain in constant contact with my students through email and through a personalized class blog. I utilize out-of-class contact to expose my students to current events and popular culture examples that reinforce in-class concepts. The blog performs the same function, but also allows students to interact with me and fellow classmates (often for credit). In addition, I use electronic communication to keep students up-to-date on their progress, thereby reaching out to students who have fallen behind and addressing barriers to understanding before they become debilitating.
Since no one instruction method that can reach all students equally, I utilize varied media, such as popular music, films, and non-traditional readings. I encourage students to discover the political dynamics within sources that are not overtly political. I have found that these methods encourage students to develop their own understanding of the political world. Class participation is a key component of any instruction that aims to reach students on an individual level. I rely on small groups, including in-class “pair-and-share” sessions and outside group work that culminates in a presentation or debate. This approach demonstrates that political science is more than just a classroom activity, but a social and broadly applicable field of inquiry.
| The modern learning environment requires professors to compete for attention in and out of the classroom; successful professors use this fact to their advantage |
Finally, I employ academic texts, lectures and guided class discussion to establish basic facts. Rather than eschewing or embracing the traditional methods outright, I use them as a foundation upon which students can build a more personalized and exciting understanding of political phenomena.
Teaching and Learning Assessment
Students demonstrate their grasp of class material in different ways. I weight response essays, participation and group work heavily, but I nevertheless employ timed exams to assess basic understanding and recall. I constantly assess basic information recall through lectures and discussions. I credit those who come to discuss the course matters privately, publicly—and even electronically—so as not to discourage the reticent. I also employ peer evaluation for in-class presentations and term papers. I make it clear that learning is something that students do together as well as individually.
Likewise, my students have multiple opportunities to evaluate my own performance. I typically conduct one or two (depending on the length of the course) anonymous evaluations in addition to the school-mandated final evaluation. In these evaluations I focus on their comfort with class participation, the utility of electronic resources, their confidence in achieving higher level (evaluative and analytical) learning, and maintaining their interest in the material. Commonly, and with the consent of the class, I modify the course syllabus and my methods based on these reflections.
| I make it clear that learning is something that students do together as well as individually |
Conclusion
It has been my experience that there is no student of politics who cannot improve his or her understanding of the political world and their place within it. I design my courses to appeal to every student, from the requirement-seeker, to the introductory student, to the committed major. By adapting my classes to connect the student’s experiences to the realities of the political world, I have found success in helping students of every level achieve a higher level of political efficacy, producing better citizens along the way.
Immersion as Individualization
See Appendix I for examples of course material.
I refer to my teaching style as “immersive.” In my classroom, I endeavor to inundate students’ senses with diverse source material, and diverse points of view meant to stimulate as many parts of the student’s mind as possible. I have found that this approach has a two-pronged effect. First, by engaging students on several cognitive levels, the immersive method provides opportunities for all students to learn, rather than advantaging a group of students with a particular learning style. The immersive method thus individualizes the learning process. Second, active learning techniques, vernacular sources, and heterodox viewpoints engage students on an emotional as well as intellectual level. I have found that moderate levels of emotional provocation help students better retain the information they acquire.
| active learning techniques, vernacular sources, and heterodox viewpoints engage students on an emotional as well as intellectual level |
Academic competitions and debates are staples of my syllabi. I have replaced the ordinary review session with extra credit competitions based on the format of classic game shows such as 21 and Jeopardy which never fail to raise participation and excitement to maximum levels. I employ films such as Casablanca, and music such as Gil Scott Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” in order to elicit an emotional response to the concept of ideology and ideological conflict.
When teaching the modern republicanism that has grown out of Burke and Locke, I always include more radical critiques from authors as diverse as Karl Marx and Osama Bin Laden. Likewise, a discussion about mainstream theories of international relations including Waltz and Keohane will always occur against the backdrop of more heterodox theories from Wendt, Huntington and Wallerstein. Presenting ideas that inflame both the curiosity and the passion of my students has always led to success in participation, retention, and comprehension.
Technology in the Classroom and Beyond
Employing modern technology to enhance learning is an absolute requirement in modern education. Since my first TA assignment through my most recent self-taught class, I have used a blog to present materials to students and to provide a forum in which students can collaborate on classroom topics, test review, make announcements, and post relevant information such as news about current events that relate to topics on the syllabus.
I have also used software packages such as WebCT and Blackboard that present similar environments, but I find that the weblog format is more accessible and provides the instructor more control over content and interface, thus allowing me to reach my students on my own terms. Considering the increasing technological literacy of the typical undergraduate, the decreasing costs of technological innovation, and the ever-increasing cost of higher education, new teachers must be fluent the language of information technology.
| I find that the weblog format is more accessible and provides the instructor more control over content and interface, thus allowing me to reach my students on my own terms |
Flexibility and Consensus
I believe that adaptability and flexibility are necessary traits of any successful professor. As such, I approach the class syllabus as a contract that binds the instructor and the class, but one that can be modified through consensus. When it is clear that the instructor is not successfully engaging his or her students, it is the instructor’s responsibility to make any reasonable changes to the course to ameliorate this condition.
That said, the instructor also has a responsibility to the students who have made a commitment to the class, possibly based on the information provided in the syllabus. When making changes, I retain the right of final decision. However, I never move forward without engaging the students first about what we both can do to improve the course.
Click on the "Successes" tab for examples of how I have employed this concept in the classroom.
Autonomous Instruction
- International Political Economy (POLI 487), Fall 2012
- International Political Relations (GVPT 200), Summer 2008
- Principles of Government and Politics (GVPT 100), Summer 2007
- American Government (GVPT 170), Summer 2006
In POLI 487, I worked to help students understand the relationship between the authoritative allocation of resources (politics) and the market allocation of resources (economics). In GVPT 200, I strove to impress a broader understanding of how politics outside of their immediate world affect them, and vice versa. In GVPT 100, I focused on providing the students with a basic understanding of the field of Political Science, designing the course as a springboard for graduating to higher level Government and Politics Courses. In doing so, I covered subfields as diverse as International Relations, Comparative Politics, Political Philosophy, and Political Economy. In GVPT 170, I aimed to employ contemporary debates in American Politics and Public Law to help relate historical and structural processes to contemporary issues.
| In all courses I aimed to provide students with the tools to improve their understanding autonomously |
The final three courses satisfied general education requirements. In all courses I aimed to provide students with the tools to improve their understanding autonomously.
I have autonomously taught classes both inside and outside of my chosen field. Each of the three included about 20 students, typically split evenly between majors and non-majors. I developed my own syllabus and personally selected course materials for each. I employed active participation projects, including games, debates and presentations, on top of a foundation of lectures and guided discussion. Selection of course materials varied from textbooks to primary source and vernacular media including film and music.
See Appendix I for examples of my teaching materials and methods.
Teaching Assistantships
- Principles of Government and Politics (GVPT 100), Spring 2008
- Legislatures and Legislation (GVPT 473), Fall 2007
- American Politics (GVPT 170), Spring 2007
- Law and Society (GVPT 231), Fall 2006
- Legislatures and Legislation (GVPT 473), Spring 2005
- Principles of Government and Politics (GVPT 100S), Fall 2005
- Principles of Government and Politics (GVPT 100), Spring 2005
- American Politics (GVPT 170), Fall 2004
My responsibilities in each course included grading and leading discussion for 60-90 undergraduates. GVPT 473, 231, and 100S were primarily composed of majors or aspirant majors, while GVPT 100 and 170 were often split between majors and non-majors. I have served as a TA in a majority of classes that are not of my chosen field, most of which satisfy general education requirements.
In each I considered it my primary responsibility to present textbook and lecture material in a systematic and comprehensible manner that students could easily understand, relating it to current events to enhance the perception of relevance—and thus the level of interest. My teaching evaluations indicate my success in doing so.
See "Evaluations" tab for a summary of my teaching evaluations while as a TA, or Appendix II for raw evaluation data.
Term |
Course |
Role |
Raw |
|
Scale |
Standardized |
Fall 2004 |
GVPT 170 |
TA |
4.193 |
|
Out of 5, Ascending |
0.11 |
Spring 2005 |
GVPT 100 |
TA |
n/a |
|
n/a |
0.24 |
Fall 2005 |
GVPT 100S |
TA |
4.067 |
|
Out of 5, Ascending |
-0.19 |
Spring 2006 |
GVPT 473 |
TA |
4.267 |
|
Out of 5, Ascending |
0.21 |
Spring 2007 |
GVPT 170 |
TA |
4.107 |
|
Out of 5, Ascending |
-0.16 |
Summer 2007 |
GVPT 100 |
Instructor |
4.241 |
|
Out of 5, Ascending |
0.17 |
Fall 2007 |
GVPT 473 |
TA |
4.299 |
|
Out of 5, Ascending |
0.55 |
Spring 2008 |
GVPT 100 |
TA |
1.419 |
|
Out of 5, Descending |
0.21 |
Summer 2008 |
GVPT 200 |
Instructor |
3.377 |
|
Out of 4, Ascending |
0.31 |
Fall 2011* |
POLI 487 |
Instructor |
4.830 |
|
Out of 5, Ascending |
1.07 |
Excluding my earliest years as a teaching assistant, my teaching performance has been strong relative to my colleagues. I have maintained above-average scores on my teaching evaluations for every opportunity since the summer of 2007, and my scores are steadily improving. In the previous semester, my scores were more than a full standard deviation over the department mean.
*Fall 2011 values standardized against department rather than college scores.
Red dots • indicate self-taught courses.
Data are not available for all semesters (see evaluation summary in Appendix II).
Since the summer of 2007, my average evaluation score exceeded the college mean by 0.36 standard deviations. My evaluation scores in upper level classes are 0.61 standard deviations above average. My evaluation scores as an autonomous instructor are 0.52 standard deviations above average.
Qualitative student surveys reflect the quantitative evaluations.
| Positive Comments from Teaching Evaluations |
Negative Comments I Have Since Addressed |
- Solidified concepts unclear in lecture
- Understood concepts through current events
- Filled gaps in my knowledge
- Informative as well as stimulating, engaging
- Went beyond obligations to help me succeed
- Accommodating, approachable, motivating
- Always wanting to improve
- Always available by email, in office hours
- Deeply passionate
- The blog was a fantastic idea
- Very engaging and patient
- Clearly wants students to learn
- I actually enjoyed coming to this class every week
- I wish he taught more classes
|
- Expected too much in short class
- Lectures occasionally draw on
- Instructor digresses too much
- Needs to be tougher on tardiness
|
A sample of raw instructor/TA evaluations is available in Appendix II.
A Comeback Story
My favorite example of improvement in the classroom involves a student who, while dealing with a learning disability, had absolutely no pre-existing interest in politics. He skipped all but one class in the first two weeks, earning a solid F on the one test he showed up for. I communicated to him his three options: 1) drop the class, 2) fail the class, or 3) meet with me every day after class to help improve his performance. Thankfully, he chose option #3.
We spent four hours per week in special review sessions, but this only raised his grade to the D+/C- range. This frustrated me—the retention and intelligence apparent in our review sessions did not translate to his tests. I looked closer at his work, noticing that his main issues were relating facts to concepts, and producing good work as he reached the time limit. I modified our review sections to relate the material to his two passions: basketball and art. I proctored his final without a time limit. Here, I finally saw the student that I knew he could be. He scored a B- on the final, bringing his final score up into the C range: the goal that his disability services counselor and I set for him only four weeks before.
| He scored a B- on the final, bringing his final score up into the C range: the goal that his disability services counselor and I set for him only four weeks before |
Conquering the Summer Doldrums
In my first experience leading a class, I immediately learned the value of excitement and relatability. Teaching American Politics, a 3-hour-a-day summer class, the students quickly lost interest in the discussion of important but historically distant events and sources (such as the Magna Carta or the Great Compromise).
After I modified my style to employ popular media and active participation in my classroom, the summer doldrums retreated. Faces that were once staring out the window (or at Facebook) were now looking forward, the silence replaced by interested queries and even occasional excitement. Retention, as measured by exams as well as in-class questioning, appeared to improve as well. This modification later served as the foundation of my immersive approach.
Instruction versus Examination
In the same American politics class, I found out quickly that I had not established a favorable balance between the amount of time I spent evaluating the students’ progress and the amount of time that I would actually be teaching them. Facing this early predicament, I engaged in a candid discussion with the class about what they would consider a better balance between evaluation and instruction.
We came to a consensus that led me to reduce the number of exams scheduled, replacing them with more instruction and graded activities such as review games and a mock Constitutional Convention. Student response was favorable. This early experience taught me the value of flexibility as well as building consensus in my classes.
Training
Over the course of my graduate study I have taken advantage of the several teaching resources available at the University of Maryland. I have taken two courses on teaching and learning. The first, GVPT 599: Teaching Political Science, focused specifically on teaching in the discipline. It covered the basics, such as syllabi construction, but also touched on different teaching and learning techniques.
The second, UNIV 798: Colloquium on University Teaching and Learning, was a general graduate-level course on pedagogy offered by the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE). This course was more in-depth, probing the very nature of teaching and learning, different levels of learning, and matching proper instruction with proper assessment.
In addition, I have taken advantage of CTE workshops covering learning technologies. One focused on how to use online tools to individualize learning in large classes. Another was specifically focused on individual response systems (clickers).
Committee Service
I served as a graduate representative on four department committee assignments that relate to teaching. I served on the Government and Politics Teaching Committee as the graduate student representative during the 2009-10 academic year, on the Political Economy Subfield Committee during the 2008-09 academic year, and the Graduate Studies Committee during the 2005-06 and 2006-07 academic years. In the second assignment, I shared the graduate student body’s point of view on the relevance of Political Economy as a subfield and the requirement of a formal theory course for graduate instruction in this area. In the latter assignments, we debated the methodology for measuring graduate assessment as pertains to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education accreditation process.
Academic Information and Technology Support
The end of my days as a teaching assistant did not mark the end of my days supporting teaching and learning in the university. Since May 2008, I have worked as Computer Lab Manager for the Office of Academic Computing Services, a branch of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences that coordinates information technology. Job title notwithstanding, the position is largely an instructional one. When not performing administrative tasks, my responsibilities amount to teaching undergraduates, graduates and professors on how to get the most out of the technology in the classroom to provide an optimal teaching experience.
Improving Electronic Learning
Learning is not, and should not be, constrained by the classroom setting. As I have found by using a blog to provide an interactive learning space for my students in twelve different classes, online learning can enhance traditional classes. The proliferation of online course management software reflects this fact. Unfortunately, much to the dismay of instructors and students alike, the learning interfaces themselves have been lackluster at best—and disastrous at worst. What the modern university needs is new tools that technologize learning without erecting new barriers.
| What the modern university needs is new tools that technologize learning without erecting new barriers |
I aspire to remedy this problem through research and practical design by marrying theories of pedagogy with the laws of human interface design. First, I plan to employ the laws of human interface theory to test the efficiency of existing designs. Second, I plan to test different online learning packages to determine whether there is a difference in retention and comprehension among students who use the various software titles. Third, I will determine whether there is a relationship between the expectations of human interface theory and variance in learning outcomes. Fourth, I will use these findings to inform the optimal interface for online learning technologies.
The result, I hope, will be a body of research that interface designers can draw from to design better learning tools, and perhaps even a reference prototype available to the university to use for its own classes.
Pedagogical Development
Going forward, I want to perfect my methods of immersion and small group work. I made significant improvements in these areas this past semester with positive feedback from the students. Diverse media utilization combined with small group discussion seemed to spur interest, retention and comprehension to a greater degree than in my previous classes. In the future, I plan to research the use of non-traditional media in university settings to improve my techniques and, eventually, develop an experiment that tests the effect of these techniques on information retention and concept comprehension.
Proposed Courses
I have a few ideas for courses that I have yet to put into practice. Each of the following courses center around my research, and all are upper-level.
The Dynamics of Alliance Formation
This course would begin with a review of the literature covering alliance formation, including Waltz, Walt and Schweller. It would then move onto more complicated theories from scholars such as Morrow. That’s where the typical survey ends. In the final two-thirds of the course, students have the opportunity to put these theories into practice. Students will represent states and compete against each other in a Risk-type game in which they are allowed to align with fellow student-states to preserve and expand their territory while preserving military and economic resources. Parts of their final grade would be determined by success in the game and by my judgment of their use of course concepts in their decision making.
The Politics of Foreign Occupations
This course would be a senior-level, writing intensive course based on research stemming from my dissertation. The first half of the course would cover literature that investigates the costs, goals and success of occupations, including work by Edelstein and Coyne (and probably some of my own writing on the subject). The second half of the course would review recent and ongoing occupations around the world, including US-Iraq, NATO-Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine. Assessment would include reading responses and student-written policy briefs on real-world situations.
Cognitive Political Science
This senior-level course would unpack the rational actor assumption underlying modern political science (and economics). Research in cognitive psychology over the past four decades has indicated that political and economic actors do not objectively evaluate the world in which they live. Instead, Tversky, Kahneman and Thaler have proved that people use heuristics—cognitive shortcuts—to analyze their world and react to new information. This course would focus on the areas of political science where these theories are applicable, such as voting, foreign policy decision-making, and economic policymaking. The course would be both discussion- and experiment-based, as students would participate in thought experiments that replicate those in the cognitivist literature, demonstrating to them how cognitive shortcuts affect their own decisionmaking. Students will be pressed to decide whether this is good or bad, and whether there is anything that government can, or should, do to encourage more objective decisionmaking.
