Huckabay Teaching Fellow is Radical

Andrew Fleming (fifth year child clinical student) has been a teaching assistant for most of his time in the program. After his first quarter, when he was assigned Psych 101, he declared that he wanted something more challenging. Since then, he has been placed in a variety of courses—Statistics, Psychobiology of Women, Developmental Psychology, and has served as the Clinic TA for three rigorous quarters. He was an ideal candidate for the University’s Huckabay Teaching Fellowship.  He applied for and received the award last year. 

Photo: Andrew Fleming

The Huckabay Teaching Fellowship provides one academic quarter of financial support (including health insurance and tuition waiver) during which the recipient is to develop a unique college-level course from scratch under the guidance of a faculty mentor.  Andrew proposed to develop a course in Radical Behaviorism under the mentorship of Profs. Bob Kohlenberg and Nancy Kenney. For someone who is always doing several things at once, Andrew’s quarter off from TAing was refreshing and enabled him to create his course without additional teaching pressures.

Behavioral theory purports that all behaviors, including thoughts and feelings, are products of an individual’s evolutionary and lifetime learning history.  Behavioral change can be achieved by modifying the context and reinforcers in the environment.  Andrew hopes that his students learn the theory underlying the behaviorist approach to psychology and learn how they can apply behavioral principles to effect change in their own behavior (and perhaps that of their significant others). Andrew’s class is heavily interactive, with examples coming from real life, making it fun and effective. Students submit weekly writings, engage in a “self behavior change project,” and also work together in small groups to creatively teach a behavioral principle to the class.

Outside of school, Andrew has a successful record of ambitious hobbies including chess (Shorecrest High School placed first in Washington from 1996-1998) and ultimate (Seattle Sockeye placed second at the 2010 World Ultimate Frisbee Championship in Prague).  Andrew shows no signs of slowing down with his general exam coming up and preparing for internship applications this fall. Why not add rock climbing to the mix?

Andrew would like to express his gratitude to all those whose teaching mentorship and modeling has inspired him over the past several years, especially Nancy Kenney, Bob Kohlenberg, Corey Fagan, Laura Little, and Marsha Linehan.

Learn more about the Huckabay Teaching Fellowship:

http://www.grad.washington.edu/students/fa/huckabay/index.shtml