Teaching

I love teaching. I view teaching as an efficient way to disseminate and reflect on scienfic knowledge. My central aim in teaching sociology is to introduce sociology as a way of thinking to students. I also strive to create an inclusive learning environment in my class. I have taught undergraduate courses on Introduction to Sociology (independent instructor), Social Research Methods (lab instructor), and Technology and Society (teaching assistant).

Student Feedback

I have fortunately received positive feedback and insightful suggestions from my students (evaluation score 4.96/5.0 for 2021Fall). Selected comments from them can be found below:

Passionate

“Yao genuinely loves teaching and she mentioned that she had never taught by herself before, which I was surprised by! She is so enthusiastic and so sweet that it made a GE course enjoyable. I’ve never had an experience like this before and I hope moving forward she gets to teach more. She is clearly so passionate about the field and about teaching, it would be a blessing to her students to have her.”

“Yao was a great instructor. You could tell that she was genuinely passionate about sociology and is very knowledgable.”

“She is so passionate about this class and this was conveyed to all the students. It made the class really interesting to learn!”

Approachable

“Yao was extremely helpful in the way that she structured her course and was very accessible. She answered any questions that I had and seemed genuinely excited to teach us about sociology. I really enjoyed class discussion she prompted as well as guest speakers that she brought in. Overall, I really enjoyed this course and learned a lot from it.”

“Man Yao was an awesome professor. As a transfer student to OSU, she made my first semester as painless as possible. She was always well prepared and knew how to run the course very well. She was very clear and taught thoroughly. She was also very kind and flexible.”

Organized

“Man Yao is one of the best teachers I have ever had. Her organization of class was very clear. She had one on one meetings with every single student at least twice this semester. She is great at teaching.”

“It was a very organized course where I felt the instructor generally cared about both the material and teaching. I feel like the workload was not too much and it still allowed me to learn outside of class. Overall I would say the class was very well structured and I would recommend both the class and instructor to others.”