Although foundational in most psychology undergraduate curricula, many students often report feeling extremely intimidated by two courses: statistics (any statistics course) and research methods. This is sad since students may be more likely to continue in academia should this intimidation turn to joy and excitement. Aside from Introduction to Psychology, these courses have the greatest potential to diversify the academic pipeline and get students excited about science. This motivates me to try my hand at teaching Research Methods - or as I put it "how we conduct research" - and Introductory Statistics - or "how we interpret research". 

De-mystifying research methods and stats can and should be done. Let's make the content "less scary" and more approachable, less turgid and more digestable, and less lofty/disconnected and more applicable or translatable to students' lives. Students reading this: you are already doing science (e.g. developing research questions, testing hypotheses, gathering data)...you just don't know it! 

To me, my goal as an instructor for these courses is to not only have students learn the basics of methods and statistics, but to feel confident when they wear their research hats.