Teaching.

Find my full teaching dossier, including detailed student reviews, sample rubric, and teaching philosophies can be found here.

Philosophy & Herstory.

Herstory.

I completed my undergraduate education at a small liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon called Lewis & Clark College. Here, I was fortunate to connect with lifetime mentors Brian and Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell, and worked in their Behavioural, Health, and Social Psychology research lab (BHS Lab). As L & C has no Arts and Science Graduate programs, they also have no graduate students. Because of this, the students in the BHS lab are lucky enough to gain hands on research experience that most undergraduates are not able to obtain. From idea inception, to method design, to data analysis, and formal publication style writing, their students learn it all. Not to mention, they develop close mentor-mentee relationships with the Detweiler-Bedells.

Post undergrad, I moved to San Diego to become the first manager of the Atkinson Behavioural Research Lab at the Rady School of Management, at the University of California, San Diego. (I worked for Yuval Rottenstreich, who turned out to be an amazing mentor, despite what he might say). Here, I managed ~20 undergraduate research assistants at any given time in a giant lab sometimes running through 400+ participants a week. I was the research assistants’ main point of contact with the researchers, and had the responsibility of training them to use various softwares, handle sensitive data, and execute research protocol. While this was a great learning experience for my self, I couldn’t help but notice the lack of connection my research assistants had to the projects the were contributing to, or the faculty for whom they were collecting data. At a school of 30,000+ students, even working in a hands-on research lab did little to foster engagement with quantitative management and marketing (ie, behavioral economics, social psychology, judgment and decision-making) research for these undergraduates. These students were not given the same opportunities I was at L & C.

Philosophy.

Now, as an assistant professor, I try to provide opportunities to the undergraduate psychology students at The University of Toronto, Scarborough, that I’ve seen a dearth of at large research universities.

My teaching philosophy revolves around fostering student engagement with social psychological material in an approachable, open classroom environment. My core pedagogical beliefs are:

 1. Course materials should be accessible, non-intimidating, and instructors should be relatable

2. Education is not meant to be a unidirectional experience

3. Teaching / course materials / structure should be flexible, and updated with student input

4. Students should be given opportunity to show academic growth throughout the duration of a course

5. Successful instruction should lead students to pursue experiences as lifetime learners

I strive to create a multidirectional learning space in which students learn from myself and their peers. In return, I learn from them every day.

My strengths as an instructor center on my ability to relate to my students both as an academic, and by making the course materials as accessible as possible. I have a long record of success in showing my students my investment in their learning and well-being.

Courses Taught

The Psychology of Morality (PSYD14 / PSYD15)

4th year discussion-based seminar

The goals of this course include:

  1. Exposing students to empirical work on morality from a variety of subfields of psychology, philosophy, and behavioural economics.

  2. Fostering student engagement with high-level theoretical ideas, and encouraging student-led discussions of material.

  3. Helping students to learn to critically analyze work in our field, and to compare competing findings and theories.

  4. Guiding students through the process of writing a formal research proposal and presenting their ideas in a way that mirrors professional conference presentations.

  5. Improving students’ academic writing ability via extensive feedback and opportunities to revise their work.

Judgment and Decision Making (PSYC10)

3rd year lecture

The goals of this course include:

  1. Improving the quality of students’ decisions. Students will learn to
    be aware of and to avoid common inferential errors and systematic biases in their own decision making.

  2. Improving students’ ability to predict and influence the behavior of others. By understanding how other people decide and behave, students will be better able to motivate desired behavior in
    others.

  3. Encouraging students to develop the ability to connect empirical research finding in psychology to real-world phenomena.

Scientific Communication in Psychology (PSYC02)

3 year lecture + tutorial

By the end of this course, students should be able to do the following:

  1. Demonstrate skillful application of the formatting and style guidelines of the 6th Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

  2. Develop a schema and set of strategies for effective scientific communication in terms of key principles of argumentation, organization and style

  3. Conduct a systematic, focused literature review for scholarly articles using major research databases

  4. Summarize and synthesize academic research to produce clear, concise and context-sensitive forms of scientific communication

  5. Critically evaluate the presentation of psychological science in the popular press, both in general and in comparison to peer-reviewed scientific research

  6. Demonstrate the ability to work effectively and respectfully with peers, including both providing and responding to constructive feedback

Social Psychology Laboratory (PSYC17)

3rd year lecture surrounding a central research project

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

  1. Recognize the importance of social psychological theory in advancing scientific understanding, new research
    designs, and practical intervention.

  2. Explore common research methods and techniques being used to study social psychological phenomenon.
    Articulate the rationale of a specific research question within the context of social psychological theory and
    research.

  3. Ethically design a research study by articulating a research question, identifying a sampling technique, operationalizing key variables, designing a study to test for causal and theoretical connections, and planning for
    analysis.

  4. Recognize the importance of properly documenting the research process by writing a research ethics protocol,
    pre-registering research and data analysis plans, and writing up the rationale, methods, and results of a research
    study.

  5. Critically reflect on and evaluate a research design in terms of its internal validity, construct validity, external
    validity, and statistical conclusion validity.

  6. Communicate orally and in writing the theoretical rationale, scientific methods, statistical results, and scientific
    and social significance of research findings.

 

Student Comments & Reviews

The Psychology of Morality

“ Excellent. Instruction was very intellectually stimulating. I did not feel like there were any gaps in my understanding of the subject material covered thanks to the level of instruction in the course.”

“I enjoyed the class environment very much and did not feel at any given moment as if I had to hold back on my opinions and thoughts. Professor Schwartz was very kind and welcoming with all the students and was very organized with the course content which provided a good flow to the material.”

“I appreciate that there were many ways to earn participation marks and not just the whole "you must contribute meaningful verbal discussion and questions during class". Given that the course is online, I truly value the efforts professor Schwartz made to engage with students during and outside of class hours whether it be through office hours or by email.”

“I learned a lot about effectively communicating, approaching things with compassion and how well-armed one can be with scientific knowledge. Thank you so much for enabling that and supporting that journey. Thank you for leading the class so wonderfully and being so passionate in class- it really was, by an enormous margin, my favourite course in all of university and it seems like I've made a real friend because of it (that makes my grand total like 6 or so! woo!). You've been a wonderful reminder of how great it can be to have a professor who is as much a human as they are an academic (is that insulting? maybe more of a human?? but that's also vaguely insulting! there's no winning!)”

Judgment and Decision Making

“This course was the first of its kind for me –– in–person lectures without a recording and a 50% chance of having a quiz each week. However, I felt that not having a lecture recording really forced me (in a good way) to stay on top of my lectures each and every week. I did have mixed feelings about the quiz –– although it was helpful to not have a quiz some weeks because I couldn't finish the readings on time and just took the chance, sometimes it was annoying that I would complete all the readings and then end up not having a quiz. I personally felt that the quiz questions were fair and very lenient in marking, so I didn't have a problem with them. Overall, Professor Schwartz is an amazing professor and very cool.”

“Dr. Steph was an absolute delight this summer!
She's so knowledgable yet so fun, definitely professional yet very relatable.
She made the course content and readings easy to understand and engage with while teaching concepts that were new and challenging!
Thank you for a super fun and productive summer semester, I learned so much and honestly I have been implementing some of the course material and tips in the marketing aspect of my business and I'm excited to see whether I'll be able to manipulate consumer behaviour!”

“Prof. Schwartz taught the class at a very high quality and thoroughly explained all the material being taught. She also used videos and personal experiences to help us understand concepts more. For example, when we were talking about the presidential votes, she referred to her parents being American and them being from a certain state, and what the votes for their state were supposed to look like versus what they ended up looking like.”