Teaching Responsibilities

RANGE, VERSATILITY, INTEGRATED TEACHING: One of my goals since joining the faculty is to serve the department’s needs through my broad range of skills and experience in the discipline. To this end, I have taught a number of courses in Building Technology, Design Studio, Urban Design, Architectural History, and Drawing. My versatility is an asset to the department and my range of experience offers my students an integrated view of architecture across the breadth of the discipline.

CO_TEACHING: I have been a collaborator in both teaching and curriculum development. I have co-taught a number of courses (ARCH 4710 with Michael Duddy, ARCH 1230 with Wendell Edwards , LIB/ARCH2 2205ID with Anne Leonard, Nora Almeida, Susan Phillip.) The chart below shows the percentage of courses from 2009-2019 that were taught with at least one other faculty member.

FIRST YEAR COURSES: I am dedicated to teaching first year students, recognizing the critical nature of the first academic year to the future success of our students. While my previous teaching experience was focused on upper level undergraduates and graduate students, I quickly realized that incoming students at City Tech required mentoring, guidance, advisement, and special attention to help convert them from students to learners. The professional development seminars I participated in reinforced this, with emphasis on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (especially Ambrose et al., 2010) the High Impact Educational Practices (Kuh, 2008) that have special application to first year students, including academic service learning and experiential learning built upon place-based learning.

NEW CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT: I am an active participant on committees developing new curriculum. especially the Building Technology Courses, which I have been developing and teaching throughout my 10 years on the faculty. During this time I have served on the Building Technology Curriculum Subcommittee (2009-present). I authored and coordinate ARCH 1130, ARCH 1230, ARCH 1231.

NEW CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSES: I responded to the Provost’s request for proposals for Interdisciplinary Courses, working with Maura Smale to develop the course LIB/ARCH 2205 ID Learning Places.

COURSE MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT: Where I am not the author of the course, I actively develop new course materials for the students to enhance their learning. For ARCH 4710 I developed with Michael Duddy a neighborhood analysis assignment to help introduce students to the key principles of Urban Design. I also developed an approach to block typology analysis that serves as a template for the students. Michael and I also developed a case study assignment. All of these materials, along with compiled research articles and a bibliography, are available for faculty and students on this openly project site: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/urban-design-reference/

I also developed new course materials for ARCH 2310 to guide students through their first comprehensive design studio (see course OpenLab sites for 3 semesters here: Fall 2016, Summer 2016, Spring 2016)  Learning from experience of student challenges staying on task, time management, and following a structured design process in the course, I developed a scaffolded approach with a series of small assignments (see course planner here ). that lead students through the design process, seeing stronger results in the student’s building design, spatial development, structural integration, and site design. Student e-portfolio’s are used in this process both as a type of learning log and the means of documenting and presenting the design process for faculty of subsequent design courses’ reference. See courses section of the teaching portfolio for more information.

SHARING MATERIALS: I work hard to share the materials I develop for my courses with my colleagues as well as the students. I view transparency and openness as the best policy, allowing faculty and students both access to the “clearinghouse” sites I develop with all the materials for the courses I coordinate, ranging from lectures to assignments, case study resources, support pages for e-portfolio, text book information, material lists and links, reading support resources… The important motivation of using OpenLab as the platform for these materials is the easy and instant access, especially for part-time faculty that often struggle with setting up access to Blackboard. I develop both course coordination sites as well as supplementary project sites to provide access to my course materials.

Examples of Shared Resources:

Urban Design Reference

Building Technology Resources

COMPILED LIST OF COURSES TAUGHT TO DATE:

LIB/ARCH 2205ID Learning Places (20 students)

ARCH 1100 Architectural Drawing I (24 students)

ARCH 1130 Building Technology I (24 students)

ARCH 1140 Materials of Architecture (24 students)

ARCH 1230 Building Technology II (22 students)

ARCH 1231 Building Technology I (18 students)

ARCH 1240 Materials and Methods (24 students)

ARCH 2310 Architecture Design III (18 students)

ARCH 2311 Architecture Design III (18 students)

ARCH 2411 Architecture Design IV (18 students)

ARCH 3522 History of New York (17 students)

ARCH 4710 Urban Design  (co-taught with Michael Duddy) (16 students)

FMGT 4880 Space Planning (18 students)

Course Coordination:

I am the course coordinator and author of ARCH 1231 Building Technology I 

In addition to my teaching, I was also the course coordinator and author of the previous version of our first two Building Technology Courses from 2012-2017

ARCH 1130 Building Technology I

ARCH 1230 Building Technology II

There were are typically 5-7 sections of each course each semester. My coordination work impacted  approx. 12 faculty and 240 students.

By academic year my teaching load has been the following:

2019-2020

ARCH 1231

ARCH 3522

LIB/ARCH 2205 ID

2018-2019

ARCH 1231 (3 sections)

LIB/ARCH 2205 ID (2 sections)

2017-2018

ARCH 1231 (2 sections)

LIB/ARCH 2205 ID (1 section Summer)

ARCH 1230 (2 sections)

2016-2017

ARCH 2310

ARCH 1230 (2 sections)

2015-2016

ARCH 1130

ARCH 2310 (1 section + 1 summer section)

LIB/ARCH 2205 ID (2 sections + 1 summer section)

ARCH 4710

2014-2015

ARCH 1230 (2 sections)

ARCH 4710 (2 sections)

2013-2014

ARCH 1130

ARCH 1230

ARCH 4710 (2 sections)

2012-2013

ARCH 1130

ARCH 1230

2011-2012

ARCH 1100

ARCH 1130

ARCH 1140

ARCH 1230

ARCH 2411

2011-2012

ARCH 1100

ARCH 1130

ARCH 1140

ARCH 1230

ARCH 2411

2010-2011

ARCH 1100

ARCH 1140

ARCH 2311

ARCH 2411

2009-2010

ARCH 1100

ARCH 1240 (3 sections)

ARCH 2411

FMGT 4880 (2 sections)