Banner image placeholder
Banner image
Site avatar

Dr. Jessala A. Grijalva

Political Scientist | Guinier Fellow | Race, Democracy, Power & Electoral Reform

Teaching


Teaching Philosophy

My teaching helps students ask better questions, evaluate evidence, and build arguments that hold up under scrutiny. Across my courses, I emphasize political analysis as a set of durable skills: defining concepts clearly, weighing evidence, connecting institutions to behavior, and communicating arguments with precision.

Teaching Experience

Instructor of Record, University of Notre Dame 
  • Empowering Change: Latino Leadership and Professional Growth, Summer 2024
  • Applied Leadership: Theory and Practice, Summer 2025
Teaching evaluations

As instructor of record for two original courses, I earned composite scores of 5.0/5.0, with every student rating the courses excellent or very good.

Courses Prepared to Teach

Introduction to American Politics 

  •  Race and Ethnic Politics 
  •  Latino Politics 
  •  Democracy, Race, and the American Political Order 
  •  Democratic Backsliding 
  •  Electoral Reform and Institutional Design
Political Behavior and Research Design
  •  Political Behavior 
  •  Research Design 
  •  Survey Research 
  •  Applied Quantitative Methods for Political Science 
  •  Computational Methods for Social Science Research

Sample Syllabi

Democracy, Race, and the American Political Order

Upper-division undergraduate / graduate seminar
A seminar on democratic theory, measurement, and exclusion.

Full Screen
Exit Full Screen

Computational Methods for Social Science Research

 Graduate seminar / workshop
A seminar on nonparametric modeling and interpretable machine learning for social science research.

Full Screen
Exit Full Screen

Translate to