From 2010-2012, I served as a preceptor, or teaching assistant in three courses at Princeton University. In each of these courses, I led discussion sections, answered student questions, and developed and graded assignments.
From 2012-2103, I served as a consultant for the Quantitative and Analytical Political Science (Q-APS) Program at Princeton. This consisted of one-on-one and small group consultations with undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. I met with these clients in walk-in hours and by appointment to discuss challenges they had encountered in the quantitative methods courses or in their own research. These challenges ranged from understanding basic concepts in statistics to implementing cutting-edge techniques.
DSS Consultant
Princeton University's Data and Statistical Services Lab is the primary source of statistical and quantitative research advice for the campus community. For three semesters, I have served as a consultant 4-8 hours per week, advising undergraduate students - and the occasional graduate student or faculty member - on aspects of quantitative research ranging from finding appropriate data to interpreting the results of their analyses.*
Princeton undergraduates are required to complete substantial independent work, and many lab users are conducting original research on important questions in their own discipline. The student users come from departments across campus, but since there are only two or three consultants in the lab at any time, we all take questions from any discipline. This is a fun - if challenging - job, and it has forced me to think carefully about how to communicate the basic concepts of research design or the statistical terms used in political science with individuals whose background is quite different. Teasing out the goals students have for their own work is necessary before I try to advise them, and making them express these goals to me helps them in their writing. This has also forced me to learn to translate data and statistical processes across software platforms, something that has helped me in my own research by making me aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the many tools available.
JSI Tutor
In 2009, I served as an economics and statistics tutor at Princeton's Junior Summer Institute, a series of short courses over the summer for undergraduates from universities across the country who are considering careers or graduate school in public policy. The students take courses in economics, public policy, policy writing, and statistics for program evaluation. There are introductory and advanced statistics and economics courses, and I served as a tutor for drop-in sessions during which I fielded questions ranging from the difference between a median and a mean to the difficulties of estimating a causal effect of a job training program with selection bias.