I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Salve Regina University, Newport, RI. I teach in the undergraduate political science and global studies majors, and in the graduate program in international relations. All of my university degrees are in political science – a PhD from the University of Hawai’i, which I obtained after doing dissertation field research in Vietnam, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT. My research interests and publications fall into two general areas: the political economy of development, especially as applied to Asia and the Middle East, and evaluating the effectiveness of teaching methods used in the political science classroom. I’m the first member of my family to go to college.