Teaching

The General Approach

Teaching and mentoring have a profound impact on my value and professional goals and give me a deep sense of reward and satisfaction. What attracts me to teaching is the joy it brings me when I succeeded in stimulating student interest and curiosity, providing a foundation for student-directed discussions, cultivating an ideal of community, personal interactions, and support, and most importantly, helping students in critical and creative thinking.

My teaching interests include three areas:

1. Demography: demographic methods; age-period-cohort analysis;
2. Medical Sociology: health and social behavior; health and the life course.
3. Statistical methods in social sciences: Generalized Linear Mixed Models; longitudinal data analysis; Bayesian methods

In addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, I am also intensely involved in various pre-doc and post-doc training programs across campus. My recent graduates have launched their careers with tenure-track faculty positions in research intensive universities and in other research institutions. I collaborated and published together with students, postdocs, as well as junior faculty in basic science and clinical departments within and outside of the university. Mentoring and advising early career scholars is both a privilege and responsibility that I take deep pride in.

Courses Taught

Social Science Inquiry II (SS 13200): a required undergraduate course focusing on the process of making scientific arguments and introduction of quantitative methods in social and behavioral sciences in the College of the Social Science Division at the University of Chicago.

Social Science Inquiry III (SS 13300): a required undergraduate course focusing on using quantitative analysis to address research questions that can inform the democratic processes and policy in the College of the Social Science Division at the University of Chicago.

Social Behavior and Health (SOCI 20160/30160/BIOS 29312): an undergraduate and graduate introduction course on medical sociology and social epidemiology in the Colleges of the Social Sciences Division and Biological Sciences Division and the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

Basic Demographic Analysis (SOCI 40101/PPS 43900): a graduate introduction course on basic concepts, methods, and materials of demographic analysis with a focus on life tables in the Department of Sociology and School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Cohort Analysis and Social Change (SOCI 50058): a graduate seminar course on theories and methods of cohort analysis and new developments in age-period-cohort models offered in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

Aging and Cohort Analysis in Social and Epidemiologic Research: Models, Methods, and Innovations (SOCI 620): an undergraduate and graduate (mixed level) course on major methodological tools and empirical studies of aging and time related change in the Department of Sociology and Lineberger Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Sociology of Health and Illness(SOCI 422): an undergraduate course on core areas of medical sociology that includes social epidemiology; social stress and illness; social biology; health, aging, and the life course; and contemporary debates at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Health and Society (SOCI 469): an undergraduate course on introduction to sociology of health and illness. It surveys theoretical reviews as well as empirical research on the role of social factors in affecting health and well-being, the social stratification of illness across the life course, and the interplay of social and biological mechanisms underlying health disparities at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Aging and Cohort Analysis in Social and Epidemiologic Research: Models, Methods, and Innovations (SOCI 825): a graduate course introducing recent developments of methodological tools and major empirical studies of aging and the life course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (to be changed to The Life Course and Aging: Theory and Methods in Social and Epidemiologic Research, starting in Spring 2024)

(Last updated in June, 2023)