Teaching Philosophy and Evaluations

My teaching philosophy is centered on several guiding principles. First, excellent teaching in geography is powered by innovative research. A department with innovative research programs will benefit from the research work a student is exposed to during their educational program. Second, students should be taught to think critically and reason clearly. Critical thinking developed in specific academic subjects has great benefits in seemingly unrelated subjects. This belief is based my own educational experience as well as an influential articles on teaching, Nisbett et al. “Teaching Reasoning”, Science 238 (1987), p. 625 – 631. It is clear that critical thinking skills learned in a specific domain transfer to other independent domains, even when these skills are focused on domain specific rules and parameters. In this sense, excellent teaching comes from excellent domain knowledge, but also from a pedagogical approach that emphasizes critical thinking and reasoning.

My own educational experience is a unique blend of arts and science, with undergraduate majors in Musical Arts (BA), Statistical Science (BS), and Geography (BS). In pursuing these majors, I studied the broadest of available arts majors (Music), the most specific of available mathematical and science majors (Statistical Science), and an integrative discipline (Geography). As such, I have a rich, broad background and a well-developed sense of teaching excellence in a variety of fields. I benefited by learning the specific critical skills of statistical analysis while simultaneously immersing myself in subjects such as music history, music theory, and political geography.

My teaching experience includes courses in Quantitative Methods, GIS, and Cartography. My teaching evaluations demonstrate performance significantly above the UCSB University and the UCSB Department of Geography’s short term and long term averages (see evaluation summarys, below). In Spring 2001, I was awarded the UCSB Geography Excellence in Teaching Award.

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Matt Rice CV, November 2004