A survey comparing attitudes toward nonhuman animals at mainline Protestant and evangelical churches in Durham, North Carolina. A policy proposal for habitat preservation in the Sanjiangyuan region of Tibet. Interviews of Mongolian monks about their understanding of the Buddhist concept of emptiness. A comparison of visitor reactions to a classical Chinese Buddhist garden and a Japanese-style Buddhist garden in Suzhou, China. Analysis of environmental attitudes in the Qur’an and the Hadith paired with ethnography of sustainability practices of middle- and lower-income households in Lahore, Pakistan. A proposal for a Women’s and Gender Center at Duke Kunshan University (DKU). These are just a few of the projects that students completed in my classes. My objective in teaching is to provide students tools to employ in their own inquiry and to offer them practice employing them in their lives.

 

Project-Based Learning

 

In my syllabi, I include a semester-long project that allows students to tailor the course to their interests. The project asks students to conduct research through involvement in their community using participant-observation, interviews, or other active research methods. In my “Religion and Science” course, a seminar of eleven students at Duke University, students chose a topic that involved original research by the third week. To demonstrate how to conduct original research, we started the course with a variety of activities, including such outings as a visit to the Duke Cancer Center to meet a clinical chaplain and a tour of the Japanese tea house and gardens at Duke Gardens. Once back in class, we applied class materials to discuss the various activities in order to model how students might analyze their own projects, and by the end of the semester, not only did students conduct and write about their own original research, they also organized class activities to share with the their classmates such as a tour focused on the multi-species features of the Duke Chapel and a guided survey of the religious or spiritual aspects of the campus wellness center.

 

Student Well-being

 

I see the classroom not only as a place to impart knowledge, but also a laboratory to enhance student well-being. I apply individualized evidence-based approaches that facilitate students to learn not only at the cognitive but also the behavioral level. In my graduate seminar on religious conflict at Hsuan Chuang University (HCU), I incorporated materials from compassionate listening, negotiation studies, and emotional regulation to teach communication skills adapted not only for peacebuilding, but also for everyday personal conflict. At DKU, I collaborated with Duke University’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) office to offer the evidenced-based Koru mindfulness program. I also co-coordinated extracurricular reading groups on mindfulness and cognitive-behavioral therapy, and offered a contemplative studies class called “Know Thyself.”

 

Diversity

 

My approach involves teaching students to understand and compare different lived realities, making my courses open to students of different ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and abilities. For example, in my “Religion and Leadership” course, I tailored the class of students who were all Muslim by collaborating with the Duke Islamic Studies Center and Duke Muslim Students Association to revise course content and offer several guest speakers in the course, earning a nomination for a teaching award. In “Buddhism and Sexuality,” we directly explored issues of various forms of sexuality and created a safe environment where students of various sexual orientations respectfully discussed various sexualities and ethical traditions.

 

Mentoring

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I am the graduate student advisor for the master’s program in religion and culture for working professionals at HCU. I teach the required “Thesis Writing and Research Seminar” for the program. Students are experienced professionals with diverse backgrounds, but many are learning research methods and academic writing for the first time. I am often teaching them methods like participant-observation, interviews, and philology for the first time. Whether through one-on-one mentoring or student-led projects, my aim is for students to learn by doing, applying what they learn in books to their own lived reality.