Teaching

TEACHING SUMMARY >>

• Dr. Lerner currently teaches courses on International Relations, Statistics, Data Science, Protest in Authoritarian States, Disinformation/ Misinformation, and the Holocaust at the United States Naval Academy.

• At the University of Western Ontario, she taught a data literacy bootcamp, titled “Data Science and Machine Learning Without Tears,” for faculty and staff, as part of President Alan Shephard’s campus-wide data literacy initiative.

• At the University of Toronto, she taught the year-long introduction to peace and conflict studies course offered through the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (2018-2020), as well as a semester-long data science course for students of Jewish Studies (2019-2020).

• In 2016, Dr. Lerner won a university-wide Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Toronto. She has written and spoken about her pedagogy with the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative (2021), at the University of Western Ontario (2021), and at the University of Washington (2025), among other locations.

• Dr. Lerner has also given guest/ invited lectures at Johns Hopkins SAIS (2025), University of Washington (2025), Indiana University (2023), Johns Hopkins SAIS (2023), New York University (2022), the University of Western Ontario (2021), the University of Toronto (2019), Columbia University (2018), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2017), Wayne State University (2015), the University of Illinois-Chicago (2014), and the University of Michigan (2012). 

PUBLICATIONS ABOUT PEDAGOGY >>

• (With Andrew Gelman) “In Pursuit of Campus-wide Data Literacy: A Guide to Developing a Statistics Course for Students in Nonquantitative Fields,” Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education. 2023.

• “Quantifying the Archives: Leverging the Norms and Tools of Data Science to Conduct Ethical Research on the Holocaust,” Holocaust Studies. 2021.

• “Analyzing Holocaust Archives through a Quantitative Lens,” Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide. 2021.

IN THE NEWS >>

• “Diving into Data Science.” Western News. September 2021.

• “To Do: Construct a build-your-own-relevant-statistics-class kit,” Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. November 2019.

• “Jews By the Numbers: An Introduction to Applied Statistics and Data Science for Studies of Jewish Studies,” Case Study by USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. November 2019.

• “University of Toronto Course Takes a Data-Science Approach to Viewing Holocaust Testimonies in the Archive,” USC Shoah Foundation. 26 July 2019.

• “New Course at UofT the First of Its Kind,” Canadian Jewish News. 7 March 2019.

• “New 'Jews: By the Numbers' course introduces students to methods in statistics and digital humanities,” University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Sciences News. 23 April 2019.

TEACHING AWARD >>

• Shortlisted for a 2020 TATP Course Instructor Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Toronto

• Awarded a 2016 TATP Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Toronto

TEACHING DOCUMENTS >>

• Are you a student looking for a Letter of Recommendation? Please fill out this form.

• Here is my syllabus for CJS390H1S: Jews: By the Numbers, Applied Statistics and Data Science for Students of the Jewish Studies