My Teaching Philosophy Teaching is an important part of the job description of an academic. Through teaching and interacting with students we not only enrich the lives of others, but we improve our orientation toward our chosen subject matter. Through teaching we can introduce topics and ideas to students that will shape the rest of their lives. Similarly, students can raise questions that will shape our own ideas and thinking toward the subject matter. There are many difficulties to teaching effectively at the collegiate level. For one, students are often busy or distracted. It can be difficult to draw them into the course material. Second, students come to class with different academic backgrounds and different learning styles. Different students learn best in different ways. Third, students typically lack an understanding of the scientific nature of academic scholarship. Most do not come to college with a strong understanding of what makes a good argument or the importance of presenting systematic evidence in favor of an argument. While in political science classes we teach a lot of information about governmental systems and other political phenomena, we also introduce students to many ideas and arguments about these phenomena. It is crucially important that students can perceive the quality of arguments presented to them. To engage students a variety of teaching methods is ideal. Lecturing is an important and necessary part of the collegiate learning process. Lectures can provide students with additional knowledge and build off of the reading materials. However it is also a passive way to learn and it does not engage all students. In making class activities more interactive, students are forced to more fully think through the material presented to them in their readings and in the classroom. Framing class materials as debates among competing perspectives is one way to do this. By asking students to take sides, they have to think through the pros and cons of each perspective. A variety of teaching methods can also appeal to different learning styles held by students in the classroom. At the most basic level, incorporating oral teaching with visual aids allows both visual and audio learners can benefit. Similarly, making some classroom activities interactive appeals to students who learn more through doing than reacting to readings and lectures. These types of activities include those discussed above as well as role-playing activities in which students are charged with thinking as a legislator, president, lobbyist, or other political actor. In addition, I think it is important to emphasize the scientific aspects of political science through teaching. It is important for students to understand political science not as a set of facts to be memorized, but as a collection of theories and arguments to be understood and examined. In the classroom and in assignments, the operative question should be ‘why’. If a student expresses an opinion in class, he or she should be challenged to explain why they hold that belief. Generally, learning to craft and defend an argument in writing is an important part of college-level instruction. Students should be able to develop coherent arguments relating to the course materials and provide evidence to support their claims. P Finally, one-on-one mentorship is a crucial part of higher education. Having attending a liberal arts college for my bachelor’s degree, I understand the importance of close interactions between professors and students both inside the classroom and outside of it, for example, with advisement on theses and student groups. Furthermore, during my four years as a research assistant at the Center for American Politics and Citizenship (CAPC) at the University of Maryland I worked closely with undergraduates teaching nearly two dozen students to conduct political science research for the Center and for undergraduate theses. This experience further reinforced the importance of instruction outside of the classroom and has left me with a desire to continue to work closely with students. Courses Taught GVPT 475: The Presidency and the Executive Branch