Teaching Hub

Distinguished Teaching Fellows 2018-2021

Michael Altman

Distinguished Teaching with Technology Fellow, 2018-2021

Michael J. Altman is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies. His areas of research are American religious history, colonialism, theory and method in the study of religion, and Asian religions in American culture. Trained in the field of American religious cultures, he is interested in the ways religion is constructed through difference, conflict, and contact. Along with his research, Dr. Altman teaches a range of classes in the department from REL 130: Religion, Politics, and Law to REL 450: Religion and Power in Colonial India. His courses are notable for their use of digital instructional methods and assessments. He is also the producer and host of the REL Department podcast, Study Religion and manages the various REL Department social media accounts.

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy is to use the topic or content of every course as a means for teaching students critical thinking and communication skills. While every course has specific terms, ideas, history, or knowledge that students need to learn, the larger goal of my courses is not the consumption of this content but using that content to write, read, ask questions, and analyze. I approach my teaching with this emphasis on skills because I believe it prepares students for life after graduation, when they will need to be able to learn quickly, master new information, and communicate clearly. My emphasis on teaching skills means that I do not see working with technology in the classroom as an extra add-on on top of the “real work” in the classroom. Rather, as should be clear, keeping abreast of new social media and communication tools, and integrating them into courses alongside writing essays and reading books, is simply what I consider the work of a professor to be. Aiming for the critical and self-conscious use of technology and communicative tools—whether that is the alphabet or computer code— is the goal for all of my classes.

Bryan Koronkiewicz

Distinguished Teaching Fellow, 2018-2021

Bryan Koronkiewicz is and Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics. As the Spanish Language Program Director, he teaches a graduate teaching methods course every year. His other courses run the gamut from first-year language courses to graduate-level linguistics courses. His specific course topics center on bilingualism, including code-switching and language acquisition, as well as syntax.

Teaching Philosophy

My approach to teaching directly mirrors my understanding of language—learning is doing. As such, I always try to enhance learning opportunities by taking concepts from class and making them concrete through creative, experiential activities. Many topics within the world of language and linguistics are not immediately tangible to students, so thespecific application of the concepts can be crucial. For example, within my teaching methods course, an activity I have implemented entails fully immersing students in an introduction to Basque (an isolate language from northern Spain). The specific goal of the activity is to have them learn basic vocabulary items such as colors and numbers, as well as basic sentence structure, allowing them to eventually create novel sentences entirely in the target language—a language they have never been exposed to before. The broader consequence of such an activity is to provide a solid understanding of what it means to experience communicative language teaching in action. The intangible concepts of implicit language learning are made real in front of their eyes.

John John Miller

Distinguished Teaching Fellow, 2018-2021

John Miller is assistant professor (NTRC) in UA’s New College Program, where students design Interdisciplinary Studies majors with assistance from faculty advisors. Miller’s research areas include Legal Studies and Interdisciplinary Education. He teaches courses on American Law, Creativity, and the Humanities in which he encourages students to leverage their own interests and experiences to gain subject matter mastery.

Teaching Philosophy

What we do in the classroom affects the world into which students graduate. Increasingly I see accounts, like the recent article in Psychology Today, decrying a general decline in problem-solving skills, attributed by many to high-stakes testing. And on the more scholarly side, champions of Liberal Arts education like Martha Nussbaum warn against skills-based educations turning graduates into “useful profit-makers with obtuse imaginations” unable to critique authority.* Between these two narratives, I see the debt contemporary education owes pioneers of democratic, engaged teaching like John Dewey and Paulo Freire. As a consequence, I frame my duty to students not just as imparting the best information I can, but also as equipping those students to see how actively participating in their educations empowers them.

*Nussbaum, Martha. “Political Soul-making and the Imminent Demise of Liberal Education.” Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 37.2, (2006): 301-313.