Teaching

The Classroom

I currently teach psychology and neuroscience courses to awesome undergraduates at Acadia University including Human Neuropsychology, Movement Neuroscience, Advanced Statistical Analysis, and Introductory Psychology. I often use a flipped classroom model so students watch my lecture videos outside of class and then we practice with the material in class. Here are the videos I use in my introductory psychology class. I previously taught psychology and neuroscience courses as an Assistant Professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN and before that I taught introductory biology classes as an Instructor at the University of New Brunswick.

I also aim to mentor students interested in science and engineering whenever I can. I've mentored numerous undergraduate honours students, interns, coops, and directed study students, as well as high school students.

In Fall 2024, Dr. Kim Borden Penney and I are launching the STEM Leadership Academy Scholars Program to support Black and Indigenous students in science and math programs at Acadia. Check out more info about this exciting program here.

Outreach

I've had the pleasure to give talks and demonstrations related to my research to various groups around the world, including to K-12 groups in Massachusetts, South Dakota, California, New Brunswick, and even Honduras! I'm particularly excited about my recent work with the Bessie Coleman Project to develop STEM programming for K-8 students across the country, with an emphasis on creating science learning opportunities for students historically excluded from the sciences. Lately we've been running virtual reality workshops at Acadia University's Women in Science and Engineering science camps. 

Curriculum

I work hard to extend what I develop in the lab into the classroom. Here are a few examples:

​Interactive demonstrations for Introductory Psychology classes

I vividly remember elaborate demos from physics and chemistry classes - explosions, smoke, racing cars down inclines, etc. But why should they have all of the fun? With support from Acadia University and a SSHRC Institutional Grant, as part of Amanda MacIntyre's Honours thesis, we developed interactive demonstrations for introductory psychology classes. We are currently making these demos freely available and they will be found here in the coming months. 

Neurobots curriculum

In a collaboration with a middle school teacher, I developed​ and implemented a freely available biorobotics curriculum called Neurobots. We presented this hands-on inquiry-based approach to interdisciplinary science at the National Science Teacher's Conference in San Francisco in 2011. You can read more about Neurobots in the news here and here.

Or watch the related video publication that appeared in the Journal of Visualized Experiments in May 2013.

​Computational neuroscience teaching tools

I developed software tools that undergraduate students can use to build and simulate their own neural circuits. The graphical interface of the LabVIEW virtual instruments makes even those without programming experience able to participate in these computational neuroscience laboratory activities. This work was developed for the Neuroethology course at Northeastern University in 2014.