I am Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Randolph-Macon College, here in lovely Ashland, Virginia. Here is a copy of my cv or a short 100 word biographical sketch.
For the 2025-2026 school year, I am on a sabbatical fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, through their Science and Technology Policy Fellowship program (AAAS-STPF). I am part of the first cohort of the new Pathways to Policy Program, which includes not just congressional and federal agency placements, but also non-profit, company and state agency placements. My placement is at the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), in the Policy Analytics unit.
Teaching: I am a professor at a small liberal arts college, which means that teaching undergraduates is my primary responsibility. It also happens to be my primary passion. Courses that I have taught include: Introduction to Psychology, Research Methods in Psychology, Writing and Speaking in Psychology, Sensation and Perception, Cognitive Psychology, the Psychology of Illusions and several special topics courses, including in our first year program, our honors program, and a travel course to the United Kingdom. More about my teaching.
Research: My research includes both basic and applied research. My basic research focuses on how our body influences our perception of the basic layout of the natural world. When we see a distance or a hill, how is that perception affected by the state of our body? A secondary area of research includes our intuitive understandings of physics concepts. How do we learn and understand basic physical principles? My applied research seeks to apply findings in cognitive science to K-12 educational settings. I am also the co-author of two editions (4th and 5th) of an introductory cognitive psychology textbook: Cognition: The Thinking Animal with Daniel Willingham, now available from Cambridge University Press. More about my research and scholarship.
Advising: Another of my primary responsibilities is serving as an academic adviser for students here at Randolph-Macon. This involves helping guide students through our general education curriculum as well as the psychology major. My role of adviser also includes general academic help as well as career and graduate school advising. More about my advising.
Service: A critical but often unrecognized element of every professor’s life is service to their discipline, their department and their college. I have served on the Assessment Committee (as chair), as well as several committees to plan Randolph-Macon’s first-year program offerings. I have also served as director of a first year program, entitled Randolph-Macon Colloquium and Seminar or RMCS101. I am currently serving on the college’s Retention Committee, on the Committee on the Faculty (our committee for tenure and promotion). I am also currently serving as Department Chair for Psychology.
Public Scholarship: I view part of the role of being a creator and steward of knowledge as sharing that knowledge as widely as possible, not solely within a small academic community. I accomplish this is several ways. First, I keep an active blog to share my professional activities with a broader audience, as well as comment on relevant issues in psychology, higher education and education reform. Second, I occasionally write more popular essays for other outlets. Thus far my work has been published in Educating Modern Learners, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Vox and the Core Knowledge Blog. Third, I share the wonder of psychology in person, giving presentations to diverse audiences from third-grade classrooms to corporate IT departments, to science cafe events in bars. Finally, I am active on BlueSky, which I see as a medium to engage my colleagues as well as journalists, teachers, and other people outside of the academy on issues that are relevant to psychology. More about my public scholarship.
