Courses
AAE 101: Introduction to Agricultural and Applied Economics, Spring 2026
Teaching Assistant (TA). Instructor: Professor Dustin Frye
This is an undergraduate introductory course to agricultural and applied economics. Students learn the foundations of economic reasoning, from demand, supply, elasticities, and firms and market structures, and apply them to topics involving agriculture, natural resources, international trade, and labor markets. Welfare analyses in the form of consumer and producer surplus are an integral part of the course.
As a TA, my role was to teach 3 discussion sessions of about 15 students in each class, where we would dive into topics through problem-solving. I held hybrid office hours twice a week and graded the students’ homework assignments.
AAE 101: Introduction to Agricultural and Applied Economics, Fall 2025
Teaching Assistant (TA). Instructor: Professor Tessa Conroy
An undergraduate introductory course in agricultural and applied economics where students learn the foundations of economic reasoning, such as demand, supply, elasticities, and firms and market structures, and apply them to problems on agriculture and natural resources. The course also dives into agricultural policies such as the farm bill. Some weeks of the class are also dedicated to teaching behavioral economcs.
As a TA, my role was to teach 4 discussion sessions of about 16 students in each class, where we discussed topics from the lecture in more detail, and worked through problems from news articles and current affairs. I also graded all student assignments, including the short-answer (non-multiple-choice) part of the exams. I also held two in-person office hours, and one zoom office hour every week to meet with students.
AAE 350: World Hunger and Malnutrition, Spring 2025, Summer 2025
Teaching Assistant (TA). Instructor: Professor Jeremy Foltz, Professor Taiya Bach
This is an undergraduate course in the agricultural and applied economics department, cross-listed with the agronomy and nutritional sciences departments. The nutritional part of the course (five weeks) covers topics on the biology of malnutrition and the effects of nutrition on the lifecycle. The economics part looks at the socio-economic factors that affect food consumption and human nutrition in different countries, and then uses economics concepts to analyze the policies used to alleviate hunger and malnutrition around the world.
This class has three teaching assistants who work together to organize and lead discussion sessions. As a TA, I worked closely with the other two TAs to ensure that all students, with or without an economics (or nutrition sciences) background, understood the class material and had the right tools to answer questions on world hunger. I held 4 discussion sessions, each with 25 students, and graded their homework assignments.
Teaching Philosophy
I love teaching as much as I love research. My teaching philosophy is that my students learn and learn how to learn by actively engaging with the material and with each other. I aim for my teaching to help students see economics as one of the many tools of thinking about resource allocation in our world of finite resources. Thus, my in-class assignments and discussions involve examples from current affairs so that students can see how economic concepts play out in the real world. I use a variety of methods to ensure that students engage with the course material: from think-pair-share, group work, to online tools such as Top Hat, Kahoot!, and Mentimeter that are inclusive and accommodating to students.
While in graduate school here at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, I obtained a Certificate in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, and I consistently keep myself abreast of new evidence-based teaching methods through the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) network, and for this upcoming academic year, I am a part of the AAEA Teaching Academy for the 2026 – 2027 academic year.
AI Policy
I am an advocate for using AI as a tool to learn, so I want my students to learn how to use AI and acknowledge the use of AI whenever they use it for assignments. To this extent, some of my teaching sessions involve lessons about the proper use of AI, specifically, teaching students effective prompting, how to ask questions so that they are not stuck in a loop, and, more importantly, getting students to scrutinize the information that AI tools give them. The last point is very crucial because although AI is making our work more efficient, students need to be able to critically distinguish what a snippet answer is and what is a fact and evidence-based answer. I particularly test whether students understand the answers from AI by asking them to submit transcripts for the AI prompts, so that they are aware of how they ask questions and the answers given.