Teaching Philosophy / Personal Statement: As a teacher I aim to engage, challenge, and inspire my students. My teaching style involves lecture, Socratic questioning, and class discussion with the goal of inspiring an interest in the study of psychology. Class discussions promote critical thinking and adaptive problem solving and facilitate student interest in psychology beyond the point at which formal instruction ends. Within the courses I have taught, I emphasize not only the facts but also study strategies and the development of critical thinking skills. I consider each class to be an opportunity to help students develop proper study habits and techniques that will stay with them as they progress in their undergraduate education. In addition, I attempt to reveal to students that psychological concepts are evident in areas as diverse as advertising and politics. Consequently, I emphasize the functional side of psychological concepts in order to energize student interest in the science of psychology. I highlight the goals of psychology to describe, predict, understand, and influence behavior and point out that these goals cannot be met without the diligent application of the scientific method.
Degrees Earned: B.A. University of Colorado Boulder, CO Psychology
Ph.D. University of Texas at El Paso El Paso, TX Applied Experimental Psychology
Previous Teaching Experience:
Instructor of Record: Conditioning and Learning Industrial/organizational Psychology (Team Taught) Introduction to Psychology Psychology of Personality Social Psychology Introduction to Statistics Motivation Introduction to Human Services Survey of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Psychiatric Rehabilitation Skills Vocational and Community Living Skills
Memberships / Affiliations / Awards:
Publications: Zárate, M. A., & Sanders, J. D. (2004). Cerebral hemispheric asymmetries in group learning and social perception. Cahiers de Psychologies Cognitive/Current Psychology of Cognition, 22(4-5), 387-405.
Sanders, J. D., McClure, K. A., Zárate, M. A. (2004). Cerebral hemispheric asymmetries in social perception: Perceiving and responding to the individual and the group. Social Cognition, 22, 279-291.
Zárate, M. A., Sanders, J. D., & Garza, A. A. (2000). Neurological disassociation of social perception processes, Social Cognition, 18, 223-251.
Zárate, M. A., & Sanders, J. D. (1999). Face categorization, graded priming, and the mediating influences of similarity. Social Cognition, 17, 367-389.
