Teaching

The first teaching position I held after my undergraduate years was as a teaching assistant working with autistic students at Escalante Elementary School, a multiethnic public school in a low-income neighborhood on the west side of Salt Lake City, Utah. This experience had a foundational impact on my pedagogical philosophy. It helped me recognize the tacit forms of knowledge that students express about the realities of disability, race, immigration, and poverty, knowledge bases that can only be truly appreciated if one listens as much as one lectures.

Dialogue is the most important driver for intellectual growth. But creating dialogue in a classroom is largely dependent on the rapport a teacher has with their students. I believe relationship-building and mentorship are some of my greatest strengths as an educator. In the classroom, I lean heavily on humor and storytelling as tools for fleshing out theories and concepts. This teaching method encourages students to lower their guard, open up and begin to see how their own life experiences connect with the course material. I have found that when lines of mutual identification and respect are established, it is far easier to challenge students with new ideas and ask them to produce a higher level of work.

Courses taught

Communications program, College of Staten Island

COM 200: The Social Media Industry: Technology, Culture & Politics

COM 445: Journalism & Society

COM 371/SOC 371: Media & the Margins

COM 220: History of Radio and Television              

COM 415: Media Audiences

COM 332: History & Theory of Advertising & Public Relations

COM 432: Corporate Communication Practices

COM 315: Media Analysis

Cinema Studies program, College of Staten Island

CIN 204/POL 219: Politics, Cinema, Media

Master’s program, College of Staten Island         

CMC 700: History of Media

Administrative experience

Internship Coordinator, fall 2022–present

Communications Program Coordinator, 2016-2017, 2018-2019

Rep. Academic Outcome Assessment Committee, 2015-2017, 2018-2019

Co-coordinator. Master’s of Arts Program in Cinema and Media Studies, 2019

Deputy Chair of the Department of Media Culture, 2018

Community

YMCA Teen Career Forum, Beford-Stuyvesant 2018

Speaker, The 4th Annual Teen Career Forum at Bedford Stuyvesant YMCA, April 2018

Undergraduate advisor, Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, UCSD, 2006-2012

Volunteer, Cross Cultural Center, UCSD, 2007-2010

Social worker, Rise Inc., an organization dedicated to helping foster children with special needs, Salt Lake City, 2000-2004

Teaching assistant, Escalante Elementary, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2004-2005    

Volunteer coach, West High School Wrestling, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2004

Reece Peck, PhD

Associate Professor
City University of New York