Teaching

I approach teaching as an intellectual practice grounded in the democratization of learning. I seek to help students develop the intellectual agency to understand the social world, learn from others, and chart paths of their own. This commitment shapes how I design learning environments, study and improve my teaching, and mentor emerging scholars.

I. Democratizing Learning

I see students as owners of their learning and my role as creating the conditions in which they can take that ownership seriously. Drawing in part from my experience as a public engagement practitioner working in participatory and deliberative democracy, I approach teaching as facilitation: I bring disciplinary expertise, structure, and guidance to the classroom while creating space for students to question, contribute, learn from one another, and do the intellectual work that meaningful learning requires. For me, democratizing learning ultimately means creating equitable pathways into rigorous learning: providing the scaffolding students need while preserving the responsibility, effort, and challenge through which intellectual growth takes place.

II. Teaching in Practice

I translate this philosophy into course design by making expectations transparent, creating opportunities for students to learn with and from one another, and providing the scaffolding needed to engage in rigorous intellectual work. These practices seek to give students greater ownership of their learning while preserving the responsibility and challenge that meaningful learning requires.

Making Expectations Transparent

I make the structure and expectations of my courses explicit—including the time and effort students should expect to invest beyond the classroom—so that students understand what meaningful learning requires and can make informed decisions about how they engage with their learning.

Learning With and From Others

I design opportunities for students to contribute to one another’s learning rather than treating knowledge as something that flows only from instructor to student. Through collaborative activities such as concept mapping, peer discussion, and deliberation, students articulate their own reasoning, encounter different perspectives, and build understanding together.

Creating Equitable Pathways to Rigor

I provide scaffolding that helps students with different levels of preparation and different life circumstances engage in rigorous intellectual work. Through thoughtful course design and policies that reduce barriers unrelated to learning, I seek to make demanding intellectual work more attainable without removing the effort and responsibility that meaningful learning requires.

III. Teaching as Intellectual Practice

I treat teaching itself as a site of inquiry. This means not only designing pedagogical interventions and examining how and why they work, but also keeping my own teaching open to observation, feedback, reflection, and revision.

Pedagogical Research

My pedagogical research grows directly out of problems I encounter in the classroom. In one project, I developed collaborative concept mapping to transform traditional Q&A-based review sessions into opportunities for students to construct, present, and discuss their understanding with one another. I first translated the technique into a teaching resource published in TRAILS and later systematically assessed it as a pedagogical intervention in Teaching Sociology. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative evidence, my colleague and I show how concept mapping can enhance student learning by bringing deep-reading strategies back into the process of reviewing and synthesizing course materials.

PUBLICATIONSTRAILS (2022)
Concept mapping technique & implementation guide
READ →Teaching Sociology (2025)
With Ana López-Ricoy · Mixed-method assessment
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RECOGNITIONGraduate Student Contribution to the Sociological Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Award
American Sociological Association · 2024SAGE Publishing Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award
American Sociological Association · 2024

Continuing to Learn as a Teacher

I approach my own teaching with the same commitment to inquiry and revision. Through pedagogical training and peer observation at UC San Diego, I have learned both from observing other instructors and from inviting colleagues into my classroom to observe and offer feedback. These experiences reinforce my view that good teaching is never a finished practice: it develops through continued observation, experimentation, reflection, and revision.

PEDAGOGICAL TRAININGEngaged Teaching Scholar in Student-Centered College Teaching
UC San Diego Teaching and Learning Commons · 2025Advanced College Teaching: Equitable Course Design and Instruction
UC San Diego Teaching and Learning Commons · 2024Introduction to College Teaching
UC San Diego Department of Sociology · 2021
PEER OBSERVATIONLeadership in Teaching: Graduate Peer Review of Instruction Program
UC San Diego Teaching and Learning Commons · 2024

IV. Mentoring Emerging Scholars

My commitment to democratizing learning extends to research mentoring. I see mentoring not as shaping students into the scholars I think they should become, but as helping them develop the skills, judgment, and confidence to take ownership of their own intellectual development.

Research Apprenticeship

At UC San Diego, I mentored undergraduate research apprentices through a year-long curriculum in mixed-method social research, guiding them from analytical memo writing and qualitative coding to dataset construction and quantitative analysis. I treated research decisions as opportunities for intellectual deliberation: when disagreements arose, we worked through competing interpretations by articulating and evaluating our reasoning rather than resolving them through hierarchy alone. My goal was not simply to teach students how to conduct research, but to help them develop and trust their own reasoned scholarly judgment.

University-Wide Teaching Recognition

My commitment to teaching and mentoring was recognized with the Barbara J. and Paul D. Saltman Excellent Teaching Award for Graduate Students, a university-wide honor presented annually to three graduate students at UC San Diego. The award reflects a broader commitment that connects my classroom teaching and research mentoring: creating rigorous and equitable learning environments in which students can develop greater ownership of their learning and intellectual growth.

Barbara J. and Paul D. Saltman Excellent Teaching Award for Graduate Students
UC San Diego Academic Senate · 2025
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V. Courses

My courses invite students to use sociological ideas and evidence to better understand the institutions, places, and social worlds around them.

Urban Sociology

This course is an introduction to urban sociology with an emphasis on urban (re)development and urban governance. Why does our city look the way it does? Who gets to decide the city’s future? These questions are important because we live, study, work, and engage in leisure activities in the city. The way our urban environment is built affects our daily lives, as it can promote equity or reinforce inequity in our well-being and life opportunities.

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Political Sociology

Political sociology is a field of study that aims to investigate how members of a society collectively make decisions about the organization and governance of public life. It recognizes that different social groups often hold conflicting interests, leading politics to emerge as a natural struggle for wielding the state power to shape the social world according to their policy preferences. In other words, what lies at the core of the field are the power dynamics among social groups and the state-society relationship. To uncover the linkages between policy outcomes and the influence of specific social groups, political sociologists often ask these questions: Whose voices are heard in the state’s decision-making process? Who wins, or who loses, in political competition? In this course, we will examine these fundamental questions through the lens of political sociology, building our understanding step by step.

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VI. Reflections on Teaching & Mentoring

Students and fellow instructors offer perspectives on how my approach to teaching and mentoring takes shape in practice.

From Students

Professor Hsu is such a sweetheart anyone who takes this class with him should consider themselves lucky! — Student, SOCI 153: Urban Sociology
Overall, really enjoyed this class! The instructor's passion and knowledge for this course were admirable. Taking a class where your instructor truly cares about the content AND the students is refreshing and deeply appreciated. — Student, SOCI 153: Urban Sociology
He seemed knowledgeable of the class content, and I liked the way he conducted the TA-led discussion lectures. He spoke clearly and was organized, and the discussion sections really helped me with the completion of my project throughout the quarter. I also valued the constructive feedback he provided on assignments. — Student, USP 144: Environmental & Preventative Health Issues
One of the best TAs I have ever had. His passion for not just the course material but for his students shows in everything that he does. I can tell that he is very intentional in his work, and it has truly made my experience in the course so much better as a result! It made me so happy to hear that he wants to pursue education in his career. He was born to be an educator! — Student, USP 144: Environmental & Preventative Health Issues
Incredibly kind and prepared. Was always ready with a creative set of slides that allowed for actual thinking, and I actually admit I used many of his explanations and breakdowns for my midterm and final papers. He is incredibly good at explaining things in a way that makes sense and makes sure to continually go over things and address student feedback when performing discussions. — Student, SOCI 1: Introduction to Sociology
He put a lot of effort into creating slides that were both accessible to students and were understandable to us all. I liked how we would put practice questions for us to answer and see if we understand the key concepts of the course. They were low-stakes check-ins and they were super helpful. The effort was very apparent to us as students. — Student, SOCI 60: Practice of Social Research

From Instructors

Yen-Ting is an indispensable TA, whose intelligence, organization, and positivity were essential to the success of the class. He is consistently proactive and quick to spot inconsistencies or errors, which is especially helpful, while also maintaining a positive and professional demeanor with students and the teaching team. I am deeply grateful for his support and hard work. — Professor JB Hinds, USP 143: The U.S. Healthcare System
Yen-Ting is a seasoned TA and I would hire Yen-Ting as a TA in a heartbeat! In my 16 years of teaching, this is the first time, I felt I had “a colleague” and not a “TA” whom I could delegate part of my class. He took a leadership role by being the lead TA and guiding the other TA as needed to complete all assigned work on time and follow the syllabus guidelines. He led three class discussion sessions with students, and I was impressed by how well he prepared for each class! He led each of these discussion classes with authority and knowledge. Yen-Ting is very dedicated and understands what students need to succeed in class. He is always ready to provide extra time and extra help to students. His communication skill is excellent and promptly acts on assigned tasks. I was very lucky to have him this quarter! — Professor Zohir Chowdhury, USP 144: Environmental & Preventative Health Issues

Yen-Ting is an excellent sociologist and teaching assistant. In fact, he is the best TA I've had so far (and I've only had very good TAs). — Professor April Sutton, SOCI 115: Social Problems

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