I am a faculty member in the Learning Enhancement area of the Psychology Department at UBC. My title is Professor of Teaching, which means I am a tenured and promoted faculty member who specializes in Teaching and Educational Leadership. (Want to know more about that role? Here is a useful resource about what Educational Leadership means at UBC.)

My academic training is in experimental social psychology, with an emphasis on quantitative methods. This background has influenced both what and how I teach.

My goals and approaches to teaching have developed since March 2020, and I am in the process of re-articulating them (2025-26). For a long time, the goal of my teaching practice has been to help people develop ways of thinking and doing that are informed by the methods and evidence of quantitative psychology, and that will prepare them to engage in their social worlds throughout their lives. Teaching techniques I have used provide opportunities for students to engage deeply with the material and their peers (e.g., two-stage exams, in-class activities and responses, collaborative projects, peer review of written work). Learn more about my approaches to teaching here and my courses here.

My Educational Leadership work has two main areas of focus. First, I pursue EL as a way to engage and build capacity among colleagues toward teaching excellence. Second, I pursue EL as an opportunity to examine and work to change structures in higher education to support positive transformation. Some of the roles and ways I have pursued these goals include: Chairing the Curriculum Committee at the Faculty of Arts and at Senate levels, leading the Psychology Department’s BA Curriculum Renewal process as Chair of the Psychology Curriculum Committee, building resources for and mentoring graduate students and colleagues in teaching, co-creating (with Dr. Sunaina Assanand) and Chairing the Educational Leadership Network Engagement Team, and conducting research on teaching focused faculty streams in higher education (with Dr. Joanne Fox).

Some thoughts on the banner image.

The views  expressed on this website are my own.

Adventures in Teaching and Learning is a website created by Catherine D. Rawn and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which applies to all work unless otherwise indicated. Some materials, such as syllabi I post here, will be licensed with different permissions. If drawing from my work, please honour the licenses I have chosen.