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 techniques and methods; aging and the life course;
2. Medical Sociology: health and society; 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 mentoring and training programs, such as those funded by the NIH pre-doc and post-doc, and early-career training programs. I collaborated and published widely with students, postdocs, as well as junior faculty in basic science and clinical departments within and outside of the university. Many of my graduates, former trainees and mentees have launched successful academic careers and are now in tenure-track or tenured faculty positions in major universities or prestigious research institutions. Mentoring and advising early career scholars is both a privilege and responsibility that I take deep pride in.

Courses Taught

SOCI 469: Health and Society: 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 at Chapel Hill.

SOCI 825 / EPID 799c: The Life Course and Aging: Theories and Methods in Social and Epidemiologic Research: a graduate seminar cross-listed in Sociology and Epidemiology of major theoretical paradigms and methodological tools in recent life course and aging research and introduction of useful guidelines on how to conduct cohort analysis at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

SOCI 825: Aging and Cohort Analysis in Social and Epidemiologic Research: Models, Methods, and Innovations: 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.

SOCI 422: Sociology of Health and Illness: 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

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

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

Short Training Courses

I have also been actively engaged in methods training and dissemination across research communities and institutions. I was invited to teach workshops and short training courses on the topic of cohort analysis around the world and continue to receive invitations to offer trainings and consultations on grant projects.

 1) Period and Cohort Effects in Aging Research: Methods, Challenges, and Innovations. National Institute on Aging Workshop: “Deeply Phenotyped Longitudinal Studies of Aging: Opportunities for Coordination and Collaboration”. February, 2021

2) New Models and Methods of Cohort Analysis in Demographic and Epidemiologic Research. Summer Short Course, Hong Kong Science and Technology University and Shanghai University, Shanghai, China, August 2016.

3) Models and Methods of Age-Period-Cohort Analysis in Demographic and Epidemiologic Research. The Environmental Health Tracking Branch, Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects, National Center for Environmental Health, CDC, Sept. 2013.

4) Hierarchical Age-Period-Cohort Models for Aging Research. Interdisciplinary Center for Aging Research, Lunch and Learn seminar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, May 2013.

5) Intrinsic Estimator for Age-Period-Cohort Analysis: Algebra, Computations, and Applications. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, May 2011.

6) Cohort Analysis in Social Research: What’s New? Upper Midwest Conference and Workshop in Population Studies, University of Minnesota, January 2010.

(Last updated in August, 2024)