Teaching dossier

A sustained commitment to undergraduate, graduate, and professional learners.

Across formal classroom teaching, supervision, curriculum design, and openly available professional-development courses, my teaching aims to make rigorous public-health and behavioural-science thinking accessible - and to build students' capacity to contribute back to their communities.

Teaching philosophy

Research-enriched, equity-centred, accessible by design.

My teaching is grounded in the conviction that science is only as useful as it is shareable. I design courses that connect students to live evidence - including ongoing studies from my own lab - and that ask them to grapple with how public-health knowledge gets created, contested, and used by communities outside the university.

I continue to invest in my own pedagogical development through formal training: Foundations of Trauma-Informed Pedagogy (University of Illinois, 2025); Decolonizing Education: From Theory to Practice (University of Bristol, 2025); the Anti-racist Pedagogy: Healing from Racism Program (SFU, 2024); and San'yas: Indigenous Cultural Safety Training (Provincial Health Services Authority, 2020). This continuing pedagogical formation shapes how I structure assessments, foster classroom community, and engage with students' lived experience.

Read the full pedagogy & philosophy
Innovative curriculum development

Open, evidence-based courses built for students - and for the public.

I have designed and deployed open digital courses that complement formal classroom teaching. These are used in my SFU undergraduate and graduate teaching, by professional-development learners across Canada, and as freely available public resources.

Undergraduate & graduate

Public Health Assessment & Analysis

A flagship open course covering core epidemiologic and biostatistical methods for public-health practice. Interactive, browser-based, and built to work as a standalone offering, a textbook substitute, or a flipped-classroom companion.

Launch the course
Continuing professional development

Implementing Social Prescribing

A structured program for clinicians, link workers, community-services staff, and program managers to learn to design and deliver social-prescribing pathways. Developed in collaboration with the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing.

Open the course
Continuing professional development

Understanding Climate Emotions

An open curriculum supporting clinicians, educators, and community workers to recognize and respond to climate-related ecological distress. Built around the evidence base produced by the BC Ministry of Health intervention and the MHCCA.

Open the course
mHealth as pedagogy

Tether - An App for Addressing Loneliness

A learning experience for the public - pairing brief evidence-based modules with practical exercises drawn from social and behavioural science.

Try the intervention
Course instruction

Formal teaching record.

Course instruction spans the introductory undergraduate level through advanced graduate methods and policy courses, with consistent emphasis on accessibility, transparency, and applied skill development.

Sessional Instructor - 6 courses

Faculty Lecturer - 4 courses

Invited guest lectures - 15 lectures

Guest contributions in colleagues' courses at SFU, UVic, and BYU spanning Environment & Health, Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Human Sexuality, the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, and history-of-medicine courses. Full list available in the CV.

Mentorship & supervision

60+ trainees engaged in scholarly activity.

I have built a research-training environment that brings learners at every level into active scholarly inquiry - from undergraduates publishing their first papers to postdoctoral fellows leading independent intervention work.

3postdoctoral fellows
4doctoral students
7master's students
12practicum & co-op students
3undergraduate honours students
31research assistants & staff

Doctoral students

  • PhDRiana Sihota - Individualism, collectivism, and their role in social, physical, and mental health (SFU).
  • PhDIqra Akram - Food traditions and social eating for social inclusion and food security (SFU). CIHR CGS-D scholar.
  • PhDAndreea Bratu - The effect of climate change on mental health (SFU FHS).
  • PhDIndira Riadi - Digital mental-health interventions guided by older Canadians' priorities (SFU Gerontology).

Postdoctoral fellows

  • PDFAlexis Palmer-Fluevog - Mobilizing evidence on the mental-health effects of climate change.
  • PDFAdam Frost - Campus-based interventions for social connection, loneliness, and social anxiety.
  • PDFKalysha Closson - Developing a measure of climate resilience and distress.

Master's students (selected)

  • MScNiloufar Aran - Healthcare utilization trends among people in BC living with and without HIV who chose to end their life, 1998–2020 (SFU FHS).
  • MANiloofar Habibi - Strategies to promote social health in the workplace.
  • MPHEmma Ronayne - The Medicine Bundle Pilot: an Indigenous approach to sexual health in BC.
  • MPHAnthony T. Amato - An intersectional examination of discrimination and social support among GBTQ2S+ people during COVID-19.
  • MPHRob Higgins - Inclusive allogenic blood donation policy for gbMSM.

Trainee-led grant capture

Recent successes I am proud to have supported:

  • Taelor Lay - CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master's ($27,000, 2026–27)
  • Iqra Akram - CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral ($120,000, 2026–28)
  • Julia Nakamura (UBC) - UBC Public Scholars Initiative ($7,000, 2023–26)
External examination & pedagogical leadership

Beyond my own classroom.

External & internal thesis examination

  • 2024Philippa Hood - DBT skills training via telehealth for self-harming autistic adults (SFU).
  • 2023Scott Neufeld - Anti-stigma campaigns in Canadian substance-use policy (SFU).
  • 2022Lucas Gergyek - Structural barriers and facilitators to wellness among GBTMSM (Wilfrid Laurier).
  • 2022Aynsley Klassen - Emotions and youth climate action in Northern Ontario (Lakehead).

Pedagogical & programmatic leadership

  • B.A. Curriculum Review Working Group, Faculty of Health Sciences, SFU (2023, 2026)
  • MSc–PhD Graduate Program Committee, FHS, SFU (2022–23)
  • MPH Graduate Admissions, FHS, SFU (2023)
  • Continuing Lecturer Search Committee, FHS, SFU (2024–25)
  • Professional Programs & Accreditation Committee, FHS, SFU (2025–present)
  • SFU Knowledge Mobilization Hub - Research-Meets-Policy presenter, “Engaging the Media” (2024)