What makes me a better instructor?

Simply put, a desire to look towards the future without fear. In that respect, I'm willing to embrace new points of view and new methods of teaching in order to draw out of students those abilities they might not even know they have.

What makes my method of instruction better?

I use the Web live in the classroom, but more than that, I think Web: interactive, always updating, dynamic. I believe there is a place for lecturing in Introductory Psychology, but one must always remember that today's students are used to immediate contact with the information, and much of it is visual. This year, I intend to lead St. Peter's into the wireless age, by encouraging my students to bring their laptops to class, and using a wireless router, have them access my website during class.

What do I do in my class to facilitate learning?

Primarily, I want to develop useful skills in my students: the ability to think critically, to write well, to pay attention to details of human behavior they probably didn't think were very important. To integrate these, I have them do a movie review of a film with a psychological issues. Part of that review is a verbatim, a reverse engineering, if you will, of a scene, with a focus not only on dialog, but how that dialog (complete with body language) looks and sounds to a psychologist.

This year, also, I'm using 3d graphics designed by myself to walk students visually through the brain. Rather than show a video, I use the design program (Blender for Windows) itself to zoom in and pan around the brain.

Finally, my students do all their reading work in small teams. Teamwork, not competition is the great goal and gift that St. Peter's College can impart.

How would you apply what you teach to real life?

My students begin with a movie review, then learn to read the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, finally writing a thouroughly-researched fifteen-page paper on the particular disorder they have studied in the movie. This takes a full eight months to teach. At the end, they have an example of their best written work to put in their resumes and to hand to their prospective employers.

How does my teaching style relate to Benedictine Mentorship.

That's easy! I'm a Benedictine monk. I believe that what we teach at St. Peter's is the cure for much of the ills of our world: social harmony integrated with individual excellence.