Core values, methods, and resilience.

Myth debunking is central to my teaching and research methods grounded in philosophy, lifespan theory, and developmental and affective neuroscience. In the past decade, my practice has focused on aggregating vocabularies, theories, applications, media, and methods from multiple fields to establish a curriculum that can bridge between humanists, artists, technologists, scientists, and health professionals.

I integrate methodologies from design, psychology, human-computer interaction, narrative medicine, and public health. My "repertoire" caters to the student of any rank who wishes to become interdisciplinary, those who are already multidisciplinary, and those who aspire to become transdisplinary. 

It is a privilege to teach required courses in a degree program that I designed. Yet the courses are also electives for any student (advanced undergrad to doctoral) resulting in the advantage that almost everyone is always present and shows up. My relationship with many students stretches outside of the classroom as we collaborate on projects, papers, submissions of every kind.

The impact is clear: student award and student-led paper output and citations exceed my record by a long shot. While bridge-building between the disciplines is my pedagogical and collaboration strength, the experience also helps me bridge the students' inner and outer world via metacognition and reflective practice.

My core values in the classroom, research lab, and office include courage, compassion, and rigor. Joint teaching, research, and mentoring experiences have stretched and re-drawn my knowledge boundaries, taught me how to transcend crises, and prepared me for the unexpected.

Still, I needed to define my boundary of "work/life" balance. I had a very recent dress and tech rehearsals in crisis management and "remote" supervision. In 2016, I traveled back and forth internationally while teaching and caregiving. In 2017, I had to teach while recovering from multiple surgeries, including teaching an entire semester without full use of my vocal cords.

In 2018, I went on sabbatical to Greece but could not leave my lab or students unsupervised. Throughout, I practiced three powerful skills: integrated disclosure, delegation, and radical acceptance. I kept the students fully informed about struggles, coping, pleasures and handed out responsibilities, latitude, and opportunities. The students thanked me more than ever before. It should not have been a surprise.

As a busy academic and lab director, I managed my students and my lab via video and hybrid ways of teaching for years. The flexibility was built-in to help us all manage traveling between campuses, conferences and festivals, experts, and collaborators scattered all over the planet, and "life happens" situations that keep coming.

I profess that pivoting is a natural and expected part of working with human beings. At any given time in one semester, members of a truly diverse group will experience illness, loss of life, travel, caregiving, heartbreak, change of plans, burnout, and more. We plan around everything because we must. Some classes are rigid, while others are very improvised. Thus, students taking my classes will learn to pivot around different structures.

The curriculum is constantly in flux: I sometimes revise syllabi weekly, learn new tools and welcome change. The pandemic brought me Zoom and Miro, which I even used to teach mixed methods data analysis. Most importantly, it gave me confidence that I can deliver an excellent education even under dire circumstances that are not just my own.

I found myself to be pandemic-ready, but it took a toll intellectually, emotionally, and physically. The pandemic and its collateral damage took the lives of many family members and friends. It took away my freedom, comfort, safety, certainty, but it did not take away my hope. Working side-by-side with health professionals and public health researchers gives me insight and insider knowledge to plan for the long road ahead and grieve in prep.

I tried to prepare my students for a long pandemic, to acknowledge that it will be brutal and intolerable at times, but that we were all going to find our way out together. Some weeks we mourned for my losses and others for theirs. The pandemic gave me the incentive to be more radical and officially "ungrade" via adaptive goal setting, peer review, accountability, and self-reflection.

The pandemic's ultimate gift was the launch of the Twentyers Club ("Eikadistae"): monthly gatherings of 4-8 people via Zoom. Inspired by the philosopher Epicurus whose students celebrated his birthday on the 20th of each month, The Garden lab's current and past mentees are invited to practice an hour of virtuous pleasure: "speed meetings," informal talks, journal club, close readings, and creative writing.

Crossing disciplines and living at the boundaries can trigger many existential struggles. My students, current and prospective, want so generously to give back to the world—some need to learn how to give back to themselves. Teaching how to become an interventionist also means knowing when to do nothing and when the intervention needs to turn inward.

Most of what I do is direct intellectual and emotional traffic, slow people down, stop them when they need to stop, and gently show them how many paths are available. The job is making cognitive maps, modeling emotion regulation, and providing support in becoming confident decision-makers, even in the aftermath of failure.

I strive to teach all my mentees to ask better questions, seek out hungrily collaborations, data, methods, and any support needed toward their quests.