Teaching 

"When physical trainers take their pupils in hand, they ins truct their followers in the postures which have been devised for bodily contests, while the teachers of philosophy impart all the forms of discourse through which the mind expresses itself. Then, when they have made them familiar and thoroughly conversant with these lessons, they set them at exercises, habituate them to work, and require them to combine in practice the particular things which they have learned, in order that they may grasp them more firmly and bring their theories into closer touch with the occasions for applying them..."

Isocrates, Antidosis

Learning is for the most part habit-formation, and a direct result of goal-directed practice and feedback. Over the past 30 years, I have seen such learning take place in diverse contexts, from Professional Communication classrooms, where students learn to entering disciplinary discourse, to professional development workshops, where faculty learn to align course outcomes to instruction, and even in soccer practices, where players learn to execute a tactical combination play. 

I have been on the “teaching” end in all these contexts, attempting to awaken possibilities to my students, so that they learn how to apply the skills they have mastered (or are in the process of mastering) in appropriate situations. For such a model of mastery to be enacted, a good understanding of the relationship between principles that govern the discipline or activity and their localized application is necessary, which is exactly where my formal training in Rhetoric has been critical: having the tools to analyze audiences, purposes and contexts allows me to help students learn how to respond to a diverse set of complex problems. 

Perhaps this is why I find it equally fascinating to be teaching Proposal Writing, Public Oral Discourse, Data Visualization  or Human-Computer Interaction Design: at the heart of it all is my desire to help students learn how solve problems using words.

Courses developed and taught

 Courses at MIT

21W.015 Writing and Rhetoric: Writing about Sports (Instructor)

21W.747 Rhetoric (Instructor)

21W.794 Graduate Technical Writing Workshop (Instructor) 

16.995 Doctoral Research and Communication Seminar (Instructor)

1.S977 Special Graduate Subject in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Instructor)

7.19  Communication in Experimental Biology (Communication Lead)

4.053 Visual Communication Fundamentals (Communication Lead)

3.014 Laboratory in Materials Science Engineering (Communication Lead)

15.418 Laboratory in Corporate Finance (Communication Lead)

2.980 Sports and Technology (Communication Lead)

10.26 /27/29 Project-based Lab in Chemical Engineering (Communication Lead)

15.418 Laboratory in Corporate Finance (Communication Lead)

6.033 Computer Systems Engineering (Communication Instructor)

 Courses taught at Carnegie Mellon Qatar

76-270 Writing in the Professions

76-478: Online Information Design

67-390 Independent Study in Information Systems

76-373: Contemporary Public Address and the Classical Tradition

15-221: Technical Communication for Computer Science majors

 76-318: Communicating in the Global Marketplace

76-100 Reading and Writing for an Academic Context

 Courses taught at Other Institutions

Business Communication for MBA students (ALBA Graduate Business School)

Computer-mediated Communication in Health Professions (Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences)

Principles of Communication (Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences)

Designing Effective Websites (Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences)

Academic Reading and Writing (Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences)

Rhetoric and Writing (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Business Communication for Entrepreneurs (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Writing for Classroom and Career (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Academic Writing for international TAs (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Studio Design in Human-Computer Interaction (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

ENG 1110 and 111– College Writing I and II (Northeastern University)

EN 1010 Composition I, EN 1111 Research Writing, EN 1212 Writing about Literature (American College of Greece)

WR101 Introduction to College Writing and WR121 Research Writing (Emerson College)

Quotes from student evaluations

Very passionate/humorous when delivering content, lots of questioning/opportunities to engage during class. Lively in class activities.  Very responsive to student feedback in creating new learning modules/workshop style assignments. Overall awesome.

7.19 Communication in Experimental Biology

An amazing, caring instructor who puts in the time to help you learn. I didn't just get a great learning experience from this class; I got a mentor.




21W.015 Writing about Sports

Karatsolis is the GOAT WRAP instructor. Give this man a raise ASAP!!! So engaging and funny and always willing to work with hist students to improve their work. Truly a man that does right by his students.


6.033 Systems Design in Computer Science