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

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