Debra

Certified Tutor

I am a graduate of Southern Methodist University (SMU) and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I received my Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences, and my Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Anthropology from SMU. I received a Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHU-BSPH). In addition I received an Andrew Mellon post-doctoral fellowship to study Global Health and Epidemiology at JHU-BSPH. Since completion of my post-doctoral fellowship, I taught for five years in the Department of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) where I developed a graduate program in Global Health. While at CWRU, I developed and was funded for four research projects, two integrating anthropological and epidemiological methods to study HIV transmission among Baganda women and men in Uganda; and two ascertaining the social, cultural, and behavioral determinants of diarrheal disease in children in Nepal and Nigeria. After my fifth year at CWRU, I was offered a position as a Research Associate at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health where I served as Senior Technical Advisor in Population and Health at the United States Agency for International Development in the Office of Women in Development. I then was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in Urban Health and HIV Prevention at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Psychology, in the Division of Community Psychology. During this post-doctoral fellowship, I gained knowledge of HIV transmission in the United States and also served as a Visiting Research Scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
I then moved to Mississippi where I served as Director of a Condom Social Marketing Program among African American crack cocaine users in Jackson, Mississippi.

I returned to the Washington, D.C. area to obtain my Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Georgetown University. I currently am a Registered Nurse in the state of Pennsylvania. Following receipt of my nursing degree, I accepted a position as a Grants Officer and Senior Technical Writer in the Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health.

In 2012, I began teaching at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, in both the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Sociology. I taught Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (an introductory statistics course) eight times for the Department of Sociology, and I taught Social Statistics three times during this period. (2012-2020).

In the spring of 2020, I moved my base of operations to the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP), where I taught predominantly African American students who are graduates of Philadelphia public high schools. I have taught Introduction to Anthropology (a four-field approach), Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, and African Peoples and Cultures. I am slated to teach Introduction to Cultural Anthropology in the fall semester of 2021 at CCP, and Global Health at La Salle University.

My favorite aspect of teaching at CCP is the individual tutoring I do over Zoom with individual students. I work closely with them to improve their writing style and to critically analyze what they read in each course that I teach. I feel that education should be transformative, and I work diligently to make this process happen both in class and when I undertake individual tutoring.

I tutor in a broad range of subjects (statistics, the social sciences, public health and global health, cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, and SAT/GRE preparation (specifically in the verbal ability and writing sections), I am most passionate about tutoring in statistics and public health/global health.

I want to help students learn the quantitative reasoning skills and critical analysis skills which will be needed when they graduate and enter the workplace.

I love teaching and imparting the excitement I feel about the courses I both teach and tutor in. I edit manuscripts for students and teach them the skills of self-editing their own work.

Education is my life's work. I love to teach students in high school, community college, undergraduates in universities, and graduate students who are pursing their Masters or Ph.D.

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Debra’s Qualifications

Education & Certification

Undergraduate Degree: Southern Methodist University - Bachelor in Arts, Social Sciences

Graduate Degree: Southern Methodist University - Doctor of Philosophy, Cultural Anthropology

Hobbies

My interests and hobbies lie in the fields of art and interior design. I currently am pursuing an Associates degree in Art and Design at the Community College of Philadelphia. I specifically love painting, particularly abstract painting. I also love doing research and I plan to apply to two programs giving a PhD in Nursing Science this fall. My areas of interest in clinical research lie in the areas of gerontology, psychiatric and mental health nursing, and understanding qualitative and quantitative factors which are associated with successful HIV treatment in minority populations.

Tutoring Subjects

Academic Coaching

Admissions

African History

African-American History

Ancient and Medieval Heritage

Anthropology

AP Studio Art: 2-D Design

Archaeology

Art

Biology

Biostatistics