In the Pedagogies section, I share my efforts in curriculum design and course development. I offer a review and reflection of student learning and students' evaluations of my teaching. I include a teaching observation from a colleague. I also share content from my engagement in sharing and learning with others in leadership education about culturally relevant, critical feminist pedagogy and give an overview of leadership learning activities I've developed and published for other leadership educators to implement. 

Since joining the leadership studies team in 2018, I have offered significant influence in shaping and co-molding both the PLP and CWC Leadership Scholars leadership minor curricula. Some highlights of this work are detailed below:

2018: Since joining the CWC Leadership Scholars program, I have center the program curriculum vision in a critical feminist/engaged pedagogy (hooks, 1994). I began by slowly integrating content in the curriculum that more aligned with the identities of the students in the program, including more voices of Women of Color and LBGTQ+ individuals.

2020: For both leadership minor programs, I undertook a curricula assessment project in the summer of 2020 to identify the diversity of our content based on the race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and nationality of the content producer(s). I also considered types of content including written, audio (podcasts), visual (videos, infographics, etc.).  I revealed data that much of our content was in written format and from the voices of older, white, men.

Program Curricula Review Document 2020

2020 - 2022: After ascertaining these data, my colleagues and I undertook significant efforts to shift the PLP and CWC* curricula to more accurately represent diverse voices, perspectives, and ideas. This includes course design and re-design detailed below. *I researched, determined, and implemented all CWC curriculum revisions. 

Over five years, I've developed several new courses on my own, co-developed three new courses with colleagues, and redesigned a course. I highlight many of these below. Each of these courses has been thoughtfully curated to create an immersive and interactive experience for students to learn and grow. 

A course I originally created at Florida State University received an overhaul. I've taught this course in three different iterations while at the University of Denver. This included a 2-week Winter Interterm, asynchronous, a 10-week Gender and Women's Studies Special Topics course in person, and a 5-week summer term, asynchronous. I've appreciated the challenge of molding this content to fit the needs of the type of learning environment while maintaining the heart of the course. 

I spent over four years reflecting, tweaking, researching, and shaping this course. It is offered as the sixth class in the CWC Leadership Scholars program, the final class the students take together as a cohort. Originally, the curriculum had this class focused on global leadership in addition to it being the culminating course for the students' year-long team projects. After teaching this course for one year, I received significant feedback from students that the content was not aligned with what they needed from the curriculum at that moment. Specifically, they were hungering for content that dove deeper into understanding the overlap between leadership and efforts to address systemic inequities. I began re-designing the course in the summer of 2019 and culminated in offering the class in its current creation in the spring of 2023.

I utilize the text, Redeeming Leadership: An Anti-racist, Feminist Intervention by Helena Liu (2020). This profound work offers a foundation for discussion of how to reframe hegemonic conceptions of leadership and disrupt systemic power assumptions woven into the narrative of leadership itself. 

A significant part of my learning about course design came from my collaborative experiences with colleagues in the leadership studies department. I deeply appreciate the nature of this collective work and believe our newly developed or re-designed courses are better because of their co-creation. 

Our LDRS 2021 course, Leadership in Social Movements, was created in the summer and fall of 2020 following the COVID-19 lockdown and the powerful protests across the country to address racism following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and multitudes of others with Black and Brown bodies.  We specifically determined our curriculum needed to shift towards an understanding of leadership as work in social justice. With this centering value, we determined to create a course that centered marginalized voices and highlighted types of action that have historically not been deemed "leadership". Specifically, we chose to focus our course content on learning how social movements are processes of leadership. 

The opportunities to co-create two interterm courses focused on the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland became an unexpected but profoundly influential experience in course design. My partner for the project, Paul Kosempel, had already envisioned and begun the approval process for Leadership in Irish Independence by the fall of 2019. When he invited me to join him in designing and leading the course, I excitedly leapt at the chance! A creative feat, this experience in course design allowed us to nerd out on Irish history and weave leadership theory and practice as a lens to examine historical topics. 

In this course, we wove in a fast-paced, deep dive into the Irish history of rebellion and efforts for independence from the British spanning a period from 1798 - 1922 (when the Republic of Ireland was established through treaty). Students joined us on a 10-day immersive course across the Irish Republic including exploration in Dublin, Cork, and Limerick (2019) and Dublin, Cork, and Galway (2021). We've created, taught, and revised the course three different times since hosting the first offering in the winter of 2019. We even redeveloped the course to offer a synchronous 2-week virtual course during the winter of 2020! 

During the first iteration of the Leadership in Irish Independence course in 2019, Paul and I realized we were stopping the course with only half of the story examined. In response, we created a second course that begins roughly in 1922 at the start of the Irish Civil War and progresses to current-day contexts for Ireland and Northern Ireland. We focused the course specifically on the influence of peace leadership in the efforts to come to an agreement during the Troubles. Again, an immersive 10-day course, we travel to Dublin, Belfast, and Derry/Londonderry and visit two Peace Resolution Centers. We successfully developed and facilitated this course in the winter of 2022 with plans to teach it again in the winter of 2023. 

After joining the faculty in 2018, I was offered the opportunity to re-design a summer elective course that had not been taught in a few years, Leadership in a Virtual World. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to expand my teaching experiences in asynchronous, virtual formats. I re-built the course, identified a new text (from a local Denver author who agreed to join the only synchronous meeting of the course) and created interviews with people who had been working virtually in different professions. Little did I know how prescient this course would be - as we faced an entirely virtual world by the spring of 2020 - I once again revamped the class to offer it in summer 2020 within the context of COVID-19. Since that summer, I've continued to build and expand on this course through new interviews and ideas as our world expands. This summer, we had a huge discussion on the influences of AI! 

In courses that have been hybrid online, completely online, and asynchronous online, I've created course content that assists in increasing student engagement and processing of course concepts. One way I've done this is through Trisha's Hot Take (THT) videos to offers a quick bit of insight or clarity on our course content for the week. Here is an example of a THT video from the Gender and Leadership course taught in summer 2023. 

Here I share two examples of student learning that are final projects in two classes. 

In their second year, students in the leadership studies programs complete a year-long team project with a community partner to address a social issue and community need. This is an example of a final end of year report for a group. This is a strong example of student learning from a long-term service experience. The students reflect in this report about the work they accomplished with community partners but also what they learned about being on a team in challenges in communication, decision making, and structure. This project is a significant learning experience in the leadership studies programs because we ask students to undertake a challenging project learning about teamwork, communication, community partnership, and addressing small parts of social issues. 

The second example of student learning is from a final project for the Capstone course - the student's final leadership studies class that is taken in either their 3rd or 4th year. The assignment is to weave a reflection on learning across all the years of the program into a broader statement of their understanding and intentions towards leadership in the future. This is a creative project that a student can approach from many different avenues. This student chose to go back to her first-year course content and pull "leadership creeds" written by herself and her peers in their very first leadership course. She then facilitated a conversation with the students about how their creeds still aligned with or were changed in their current understanding and practice of leadership. It was a beautiful, interactive, and creative way to show her understanding of leadership always includes the relationships and needs of those around her. 

Student evaluations are a key way I understand how students are experiencing the curriculum and how I can learn and grow as an educator. The following sections are high level analysis of my course evaluations, but you can also find all of my course evaluations here. 

This WordCloud is generated from descriptive words stated in the qualitative student evaluation data from the question: What are the strengths of the course and the instructor? Larger words in the cloud were most represented in the sample. What I appreciate about this simple type of qualitative analysis is how it emphasizes what most students are saying about the courses I teach - I am understanding, engaging, and different. I center STUDENTS. They feel safe, sure, heard, and able. They see me as knowledgeable, supportive, and clear with expectations. These data represent the full scope of my intentional pedagogy - outcomes that students have articulated across the years. 

Next I reflected on the student evaluation responses to the question: What are the weaknesses of the course or the instructor? The most present theme represented students requesting me to offer deeper clarity on assignments in class and on Canvas. The second-highest topic offered specific recommendations for changes in course content. I have striven to incorporate this crucial feedback into my courses over the years and the student feedback on this question in later years reflects these changes. 

After my first years of consistent feedback in needing better structure for both the class framework and course assignments,  I developed a system to utilize PowerPoints that serve as a structural touchpoint for the lesson plan. I've learned it is helpful to review with students what we will be doing for the day and also give reminders at the beginning of class! I also use them to show photos of our authors, integrate discussion questions and give credit to students for their ideas, and incorporate lots of animal memes because they make me and the students smile.

Here are some examples of these powerpoints.

In addition to powerpoints, I strive to lesson plan for each class with scaffolded, intentional content that diversifies the types of learning activities. This ensures students experience interactive, engaging classes. Some pedagogical tools I implement include role play, pair & share, small group, and large group discussion, case studies, four corners or scale discussions, world cafes, and experiential learning stations that incorporate creative arts. 

In Fall of 2023 my research colleague, Dr. Michele Tyson, joined my 2nd-year CWC class, Leading Community Change, which centers the year-long project students undertake with a community partner. Dr. Tyson observed the course meeting that focused on preparing the students to think critically about undertaking such a comprehensive project - including hearing from students on their concerns, guest speakers who understood the experience of the project, and a community partner example. Dr. Tyson's reflections on observing the course are shared here: 

A significant portion of my work as a leadership educator is directly impacted by the scholarship and pedagogical conversation occurring among leadership education in higher education. This scholarly community provides a resource for building the curriculum and courses highlighted above. I have also had the opportunity to contribute ideas and learning activities to this community. A selected list of works emphasizes these works:

Pause for Pedagogy Article and Video Interview (2019)

Video Interview

Below are four learning activities that I've developed in my own coursework, that were published in different leadership learning facilitation guides and shared with the leadership education community: