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-: I specialize in American politics.
I teach a current issues class for the honors program.
I also teach our presidency class.
But my main specialization is courts and the law.
-: Research focuses modern China.
And I teach courses on China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
-: We have so much polarization, political polarization.
And it's really hard for people to talk to each other,
to understand each other.
So in my classes we try to explain
why this has happened.
What the implications are.
Where it might go from here.
-: There's nothing you can do in your life
that will not in some way impact and be impacted
by East Asia.
It's a global world,
it all connects and you may never get to East Asia,
but you're impacted by what goes on there
and you need to kinda know something about them.
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A lot of my work
has actually been published and read in China.
So when I go there,
Chinese know me and know what I'm doing
and that's really very gratifying.
-: I'm proud of my teaching awards.
I'm also proud of the fact that I often keep in touch
with past students.
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-: The much greater diversity of the student body.
-: The addition of the honors program.
-: When I started,
when I would teach the survey
and I introduced Chinese cuisine
and how it related to cooking and things,
I would bring a walk to class
to show them what it looked like.
Well, now they can walk out with the student union
if they don't know already.
It's just a very different atmosphere.
-: When I came,
there was an effort to relandscape the campus
and it has made it much nicer.
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-: I won the ORCA Award,
Outstanding Research and Creativity Award,
which is a system-wide award.
And I felt like that really indicated
that my work was appreciated in the inner university.
I was very surprised to get that.
And it was a nice honor.
-: I really like teaching.
That's why I'm still here.
That's why I've been teaching in person
through the pandemic.
It's also why I continue teaching,
some years ago
once when I slipped on a patch of ice
and broke my jaw
and it was wired shut for eight weeks,
I could hardly talk,
but I continued teaching one of my courses.
I just like teaching.
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