Academics

I was a professor in the University of Virginia School of Architecture from 1992 through 2021. During the 1990s and 2000s I wrote several short essays on teaching and faculty life. I include some of these essays below, along with a few other documents from my academic past.

Essays on teaching and faculty life

A few other things

  • More than a Walk-on. 2009
    • Early in my career in the 1990s, Randy Pausch was a mentor of mine in a teaching fellowship program. Randy became famous many years later for the Last Lecture (if you’ve never seen it, you should. It’ll be worth it). I describe some of the impact of that experience in two of the above essays: Usually Nice, Always Helpful: A Mentor’s Approach and Making Every Lecture Your Last. The More that a Walk-on essay describes my reaction to seeing Randy’s 3-second cameo appearance int the 2009 Star Trek movie, almost a year after his death.
  • Dissecting the Classroom, by Dan Barrett from the Chronicle for Higher Education, 2014.
    • In 2013, one of my classes was part of a study on teaching methods conducted by Karen Inkles of UVA’s Curry School of Education. One day she came to observe on of my lectures; accompanying her was Dan Berrett, who was writing an article about her study for the Chronicle of Higher Education. As part of his article, he described his observations in my classroom. That description starts on page 5; I’ve added highlights. He was extremely generous in his assessment.
  • Curriculum Vitae. 2021. This is my academic CV, final edition, included here for historical purposes.