Iowa State University, School of Education

All of the syllabi for Iowa State University courses are available through the College of Human Sciences website.

HGED 666: Academic Cultures (Fall 2020; Fall 2023)

This course is organized around three key topics in Higher Education Studies. First, we focus on the philosophy of the university by reviewing key historical and contemporary pieces that argue complementary and competing purposes for higher education to understand the pillars upon which American academic cultures are constructed. Next, we explore historical and contemporary accounts of faculty life to identify the social, material, and technological features of academic culture. Finally, we review the influence of academic culture on the educational enterprise, paying attention to undergraduate and graduate education.

HGED 615D: Seminar in International and Comparative Higher Education (Spring 2019) -Syllabus-

This course has four primary components:

  1. First, we will orient ourselves to the study of international and comparative higher education. What are the key concepts, tensions, and problems involved in the study of higher education across nation-state borders?
  2. Next, we train our focus on the student experience of international higher education. How does globalization and internationalization impact domestic and international student experiences?
  3. Then, we engage with three book length case studies of core issues in international higher education: the development of nation-state systems, the role of student politics and activism, and the internationalization of the American Community College model.
  4. We conclude this course with your work on international higher education. You will complete a synthetic literature review on an issue of importance in post-secondary international education and share what you learned with your classmates. Your review will identify important implications for future research and practice.

HGED 575: Organization and Administration of Student Affairs (Fall 2018-2023) -Syllabus-

I developed this course in collaboration with Dr. Janette Mariscal. 

Students Affairs is work. As emerging professionals, you need a toolkit that will help you navigate your career. This requires an understanding of how factors in the political economy inside and outside of your institution can have an impact on your work. Your toolkit also needs skills and strategies for managing relationships, for managing your trajectory, and for managing your work. Much of this learning requires hands on experience (which you get in your assistantships, jobs, and practicums). The purpose of this course is to address some domains (like budgeting, supervision, ethical decision-making, and policy analysis) that may be less well represented in your day to day world. To provide you exposure to these tasks we will 1) review a broad spectrum of the literature on the organization and administration of student affairs in higher education, 2) apply what we learned through two simulation events, and 3) synthesize what we learn through a collaborative group project on an organizational issue of importance to student affairs practitioners.

HGED 664: College Organization and Administration (Spring 2018) -Syllabus-

This course is designed to explore the complex nature of higher education organizations by introducing major theoretical traditions that may help us better understand the function and dysfunction of post-secondary institutions. Class sessions will highlight critical issues, varying perspectives, and scholarship (historical and contemporary) related to leadership, management, governance, decision-making, and change within higher education organizations.  This course draws extensively from Dr. Rosemary Perez’s prior iteration. 

RESEV 552: Basic Educational Statistics (2018-present)

I taught an online version of this course in the Winter/Spring semester of 2019. A video recording of the course introduction is available here. The video provides an overview of the course including a breakdown of how the course is taught.

I also received a Miller Open Education Resources (OER) grant to further develop the materials we use in the course- including R and RStudio. Examples can be found on my OER trailblazers website.

RESEV 550: Introduction to Education Research (Fall 2017) -Syllabus-

This course is designed to provide a broad overview of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research in post-secondary education. You will develop skills for reviewing the literature; developing research problems and questions; designing research projects; understanding data collection and analysis issues; and evaluating research studies. As such, special attention will be paid to the importance of theoretical and conceptual frameworks in designing and constructing research studies for improving educational practice.  

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

OS 410: Advanced Research Methods in Organizational Studies (Fall 2016 w/ Dr. Sara Soderstrom) 

This course is an advanced exploration of the methods used in conducting organizational studies research. Students expand their abilities to conceptualize, design, implement, report, present, and critique research. Students learn through review and discussion of research methods, as well as their direct application in short assignments and a semester-long, team-based research project. Methods examined in the course include, but are not limited to, surveys, interviews, participant observation/ethnography, archival research, social network analysis, and experiments. Students build skills in presenting research and discuss research ethics.

EDUC 795: Quantitative Methods for Non-Experimental Research (Winter 2016 w/ Dr. Peter Bahr) -Syllabus-

Building on the foundation developed in Educ 793, this course provides the opportunity for students to advance their quantitative reasoning skills for applied empirical research, focusing on a range of statistical techniques but with a special emphasis on regression techniques that are used frequently in education research. As part of this course, I led a weekly lab on applying statistical concepts from lecture in STATA. 

 EDUC 793: Introduction to Quantitative Methods in Educational Research (Fall 2015 w/ Dr. Bryan McCall) -Syllabus-                                                                                                                  

Surveys quantitative methods of inquiry as they are currently used in the study of the contexts, processes, and effects of education. Introduces students to elementary statistics, exploratory data analysis, research design, and computer-based data analysis methods. As part of this course, I led a weekly lab on applying statistical concepts from lecture in STATA.

 ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods for Social Research: Network Analysis (Summer 2015 w/ Ann McCranie) -Syllabus and Course Materials-

Social network analysis (SNA) is an increasingly used perspective for describing and modeling the relationships between social actors. This course lays the groundwork behind social network analysis (SNA) from conceptual, mathematical, empirical and computational perspectives. This approach draws from the rich multidisciplinary history that has shaped the field’s development – incorporating perspectives from sociology to physics, math to public health.

 EDUC 561: Introduction to Higher Education (Fall 2013 w/ Dr. Lisa Lattuca) -Syllabus-

Provides an overview of the postsecondary education system in the United States; examines the major features of this system and explores its effects; explores effects of various professional and disciplinary perspectives on the study of postsecondary education viewed as an interdisciplinary field.

https://youtu.be/uSfibzaTUBk?list=PLkidoCKZ32lEER_ccXoLg9tkQDIilXJhI