September 2024 Teacher-Scholar Spotlight: Veronica Peterson

Welcome to the newest edition of our Teacher-Scholar Spotlight, illuminating PhD students’ insights on teaching and learning! Each month we’ll share the experiences of PhD students who have engaged in Bok Center programming and what they’ve learned about and from teaching.

Veronica Peterson, G6 in Anthropology

Summarize your research in 2 sentences.

In the late 19th century, thousands of people came to the US from southern China for new opportunities, leaving behind the material traces of their lives at archaeological sites across the US West. How did they use food to take care of themselves and how did those experiences shape contemporary Chinese American social memories of home cooking?

What have you learned from teaching?

Teaching helps me distill ideas and figure out how to communicate them effectively. But it's iterative! Through teaching, I've learned to temper the expectations of trying to do something "perfectly" on the first try (impossible) and instead really think through what the key take-away is and how I can convey that.

How did you get involved with the Bok Center?

I wanted to supplement my department's pedagogy course with more training.

What is something you learned in a Bok Seminar that you’ll use in the future?

The seminars are great for learning specific techniques and acquiring teaching tools, but they also gave me some meta-level lessons, too! In addition to giving me the tools to communicate my teaching philosophy, I also learned some specific classroom management techniques in the Bok Seminar Crafting a Diversity Statement with Ashlie Sandoval-Lee. In How to Teach Writing Assignments – And Design Your Own with Jonah Johnson, I came away with a renewed sense of how teaching critical evaluation and writing skills may be the most important thing my students learn, no matter what subject I teach.

What would you say to PhD students about why they should get involved with the Bok Center?

The Bok Center has been one of the most useful career development spaces on campus because they help you think through what it means for you, specifically, to teach. At the most fundamental level, they can support you as a teaching fellow with guidance and resources. If you think you want to be a teacher-scholar, they provide a space to develop and hone your skills.

What’s a fun fact about yourself?

I love to garden! Archaeology is largely a destructive science - classically, disturbing the earth to recover our evidence. It feels good to work with the earth to grow things and cultivate habitats for other plants and critters, too.

Have you been working with the Bok Center this year? Do you want to be featured in the Teacher-Scholar spotlight? Fill out this form and we’ll be in touch!