In the college classroom

Teaching the humanities with an emphasis on empowerment, empathy, and meaning-making.

I regularly teach a range of undergraduate courses on Asian history, religions, and medical humanities. I have a true passion for teaching, and it is my strong belief that the humanities are indispensable in providing undergraduates important tools to understand the world and to actively engage in society. My teaching methods have been influenced by several key experiences in my professional development. The first was my year as an instructor in the expository writing program at Johns Hopkins, which taught me the Harvard “Expos” pedagogical method. The second was my year-long fellowship at LeMoyne College, where I encountered the Jesuit philosophy of cura personalis (educating the whole person) and the method of “learning contracts.” Finally, my time at Abington College, a minority-majority institution with an extremely diverse student body, has also challenged me to expand and refine my teaching methods with a strong focus on equity and inclusion.

More recently, I have begun to develop an initiative that I call “pedagogy of the soul,” which I am starting to write about a bit in my blog. I believe that the chaotic and unsettling environment of the post-pandemic world calls for something more than business as usual from professors. We have become comfortable thinking in terms of “accessibility” and “student success,” but I argue that we need to show up differently in the classroom in order to meet the crushing social, cultural, and economic burdens that young people are facing today. My current writing and thinking in this area explores how we might contribute to healing, community building, empathy, and spiritual renewal at the deepest level for the current generation of students.

See my teaching awards.


Public courses

I am also dedicated to public outreach. I regularly publish books, trade magazine articles, blog posts, and other works that translate my research for nonscholarly audiences in order that my scholarship may have a broader impact beyond the academy. I also frequently have given lectures at acupuncture and massage schools, public libraries, museums, and other non-profit organizations locally, nationally, and internationally. I am passionate about these activities, as I believe they are important ways to promote both the public appreciation of religious and medical pluralism, as well as the value of the humanities for our contemporary society. Contact me to book an event.

Also see:


Publications about pedagogy

Salguero, C. Pierce 2021. “The Role of Buddhist Studies in Fostering Metadisciplinary Conversations and Improving Pedagogical Collaborations.” Religions 12.1. https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel12010001

Salguero, C. Pierce 2021. “Buddhist Healthcare in Philadelphia: An Ethnographic Experiment in Student-Centered, Engaged, and Inclusive Pedagogy.”  Religions 12.6.  https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12060420

See also my blogs about teaching: Pedagogy for the Soul and Teaching Strategies & Experiments