Tina Burdsall, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Teaching with a split appointment in the Department of Sociology and the Honors College. Her teaching focuses on medical sociology, with a focus on death, dying, and bereavement.
Dr. Burdsall came to academia through a nontraditional path, spending more than a decade working outside higher education before returning to graduate school in sociology. That experience continues to shape her teaching. She attempts to be mindful of the strengths, challenges, and responsibilities that varying life experiences can bring into the classroom. Her courses invite students to see themselves as capable and curious learners who can think through difficult questions sociologically, and who can connect personal experience to larger social structures.
Much of Dr. Burdsall’s teaching centers on topics many people are taught to avoid, including death, grief, illness, inequality, and care. In her classes, she works to create intellectually rigorous learning spaces where students can examine difficult realities without losing sight of compassion or social responsibility. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes growth, reflection, critical thinking, and helping students move from thinking of themselves as passive recipients of knowledge to thinking of themselves as able to ask important questions, work with evidence, and contribute to valuable conversations.
Dr. Burdsall has served as advisor or chair for roughly 40 undergraduate Honors theses and has recently piloted a project-based Honors thesis cohort to support students doing original social science research on death, dying, or bereavement within college settings. She enjoys teaching social science research methods, advising Honors thesis students, and mentoring graduate students who are preparing to teach in higher education. She has been actively involved in the Pacific Sociological Association for many years and sees great value in students experiencing professional associations and conferences as additional sites of learning and mentorship.
She sees the recognition of this award not as a reflection of individual work alone, but as part of the ideas, care, conversations, and generosity that circulate among students and colleagues who continue to show up for one another, even under challenging conditions.
Outside of teaching, she enjoys making art and pottery.