My Teaching
UNB School of Leadership Studies
Since January 2023, I have been an Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Leadership Studies at the University of New Brunswick's School of Leadership Studies, previously known as the Renaissance College. The school is known for its innovative, interdisciplinary approach to leadership education, emphasizing experiential learning, community engagement, and small, cohort-based classes.
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At the University of New Brunswick, I am privileged to practice engaged scholarship and apply critical pedagogy inspired by the teachings of Paulo Freire, Parker J. Palmer, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Adrienne Maree Brown, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. My goal is to guide students in community-centered, purpose-driven learning, helping them discover paths of authentic service for sustainable futures in a rapidly changing, complex world.
Courses I Teach
Since 2023, I’ve had the privilege of teaching a variety of courses that encourage students to connect theoretical content with community contexts and discover ways to take informed action.
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RCLP 1001: Foundations of Leadership
This course introduces students to the philosophical and historical foundations of leadership theory and practice. Students explore various theories and models of leadership and reflect on their own and others’ potential to engage in leadership processes. -
RCLP 4045: Learning Portfolio
A capstone course for graduating students, where they create a portfolio that showcases their learning in relation to the Renaissance College Learning Outcomes. -
RCLP 4043: Interdisciplinary Leadership Seminar
Focused on transformative leadership, this course builds critical awareness around power and privilege, helping students articulate both individual and collective purpose. It empowers students to deconstruct social frameworks that generate inequity and to lead with moral courage.
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RCLP 1021: Cultivating Wellbeing
Students learn to cultivate individual and community wellbeing within a leadership context, developing essential skills like authenticity, mindfulness, resilience, integrity, and compassion. -
RCLP 1111: Leadership Forum
Providing a comprehensive perspective on leadership, this course enhances academic skills such as information literacy, critical thinking, and effective communication through a holistic lens. -
RCLP 3701: Evaluation for Systems Change
This course introduces students to evaluation and reflective practice as crucial components of leadership. Students learn to apply evaluation in the context of systems change, particularly within non-profit, public, and social purpose organizations.
My Pedagogy
My teaching practice is grounded in engaged pedagogy, democratic classrooms, and a decolonizing approach to education. I use methods from critical pedagogy and popular education that promote democracy, participation, and dialogue. I foster hands-on, experiential learning, encouraging curiosity and exploration where mistakes are valued as part of the process.
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I prioritize creating a participatory environment that respects diverse backgrounds, learning styles, and neurodiversity, offering students various ways to express themselves. My goal is to co-create knowledge with students, empowering them to act authentically and develop into their best selves, guided by the principles of love as defined by bell hooks—care, commitment, knowledge, respect, and trust.
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I aim to facilitate critical engagement with material, encouraging students to examine content from different perspectives and cultivate reflexivity, empathy, and self-awareness.
My Teaching Strategy Incorporates Four Essential Elements:
Cultivating a Participatory, Inclusive Learning Environment
I design my courses to be sensitive and responsive to a variety of learning styles, cultural backgrounds, unique personal histories and lived experiences. My teaching methods are discussion- and project-based, interactive and include various hands-on and experiential activities to provide students with different means for expressing their ideas and demonstrating how they reached learning outcomes. Reading lists reflect the diversity of cultures and knowledges and include scholars with diverse lived experiences and of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Encouraging Critical Thinking and Reflective Practice
To promote critical thinking, reflection and imagination I invite students to engage in arts-based and somatic activities such as collage making, poetry-writing, mindful breathing, guided meditations, and group work.
Practicing Wholistic Accountability
Students learn best when they are not only accountable to their educational institution and to me as their prof but also to their personal goals and values, as well as their peers. Each class participates in creating learning agreement that guides how we show up for ourselves and each other in the classroom. I invite students to articulate what they expect from me as their instructor, from each other, and from themselves to ensure they stay engaged, enjoy the process, and reach their intended goals on this journey.
Facilitating Collaborative Learning
I meet students where they are at. Together we discover their starting point on the learning journey. As we progress collectively to our intended destination, aka ‘course outcomes’, I pay attention to group dynamics, nurture good group process and meaningful conversations, encourage creativity and critical thinking.