Advising extends the work of the classroom. In both contexts, I ask questions, listen for what a student cares about, and stay with the conversation long enough that a student can name what changed in their own thinking and behavior. Students and I establish trust early, which opens room for the intellectual risks that learning requires.
Many first-year students arrive worried that a broad education leads nowhere. The evidence says otherwise. A liberal arts education cultivates habits that carry into work, citizenship, and the authorship of a life: weighing evidence, reasoning across difference, and continuing to learn once the coursework ends. Those habits develop as much in the communities students join as in the courses they take, so I help my advisees choose both deliberately, through research, internships, service, and employment.
I have taught in higher education for over a decade, after eleven years teaching and administering in secondary schools. Across both, I have observed students traverse an entire educational system and emerge on the far side, which shapes how I advise: for the whole person rather than the next semester.
I teach two Engagements seminars. Crafting Archives asks first-year students to test claims about their own learning against evidence they curate and craft themselves. Building Agreement guides them from friction and dissent toward action a group can sustain together.
I hold a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies from Florida Atlantic University and an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Lynn University. My current research reads the handmade scrapbooks my students build, treating them as evidence of how belonging takes shape across a first semester.