Associate Pedagogy Fellows

Nicole Burgoyne

Associate Instructional Professor, Germanic Studies

As an Associate Instructional Professor, Nicole G. Burgoyne teaches at all levels of the German language program and implements research-based assessment techniques. She teaches topics ranging from fairy tales and folklore to contemporary politics, and the working cultures of German-speaking countries from the Cold War to the present. In her own work and as a mentor to other instructors, Burgoyne is particularly keen on the integration of language pedagogy, languages for specific purposes (LSP), and content-based instruction. She also leads a local, community-based initiative called SPARK for German in Chicago public schools. Burgoyne received her PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University in 2016.

Christopher Clapp

Assistant Instructional Professor, Harris School of Public Policy 

Christopher Clapp teaches econometrics and data science classes (program evaluation, machine learning, and programming for public policy) in both the traditional Masters of Public Policy (MPP) and Evening Masters Program (EMP) tracts at the Harris School of Public Policy. With a PhD in economics, he has over a decade of experience teaching students at two large, public universities (the University of Virginia, Florida State University) in addition to those at the University of Chicago. At UChicago, he has previously taught undergraduate, public finance classes in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics. His research interests are in applied microeconomics, primarily the fields of public, urban, environmental, and labor economics. Christopher loves teaching Harris students because they share his passion for using the tools he teaches to make the world a better place. 

Caterina Fugazzola

Assistant Senior Instructional Professor, Global Studies

Caterina Fugazzola’s research interests include transnational politics, gender and sexuality studies, and video game studies. She teaches courses on new media analysis, digital ethnography, transnational queer organizing, and video games and global politics. Teaching and pedagogical development is one of her favorite parts of being an academic. Caterina is particularly interested in developing pedagogical approaches that promote a cooperative and active learning environment through the incorporation of new technologies into the classroom. She is currently working on integrating virtual reality and augmented reality experiences into her courses, using immersive experiences in virtual spaces as a way to generate conversations on embodied affect and cognition, contemporary moral panics, and global sociopolitical tensions.

Russell Johnson

Assistant Director, Undergraduate Religious Studies Program and Core Sequence

Russell Johnson’s research focuses on religious ethics and the philosophy of communication, specifically the ways “us versus them” frameworks shape people's imaginations and behavior in social conflicts. Several of the courses he teaches, including “Star Wars and Religion” and “Villains: Evil in Philosophy, Religion, and Film,” analyze popular films to consider the tendency to think about political conflict in terms of good guys versus bad guys, which often oversimplifies the moral landscape. He has also taught courses in the Humanities Core and is currently helping develop and teach in the new SOSC Core sequence, “Religion: Cosmos, Conscience, and Community.” One of his goals as a teacher is to help students realize that ethics, religion, and philosophy are not abstract topics “out there.” They can be found in the video games we play, the news stories we read, the memes we share, and the decisions we make every day. Dr. Johnson finds that UChicago students are terrific at drawing connections between centuries-old ideas and present-day culture, and that conservations in class always enrich his appreciation for the texts we read and the questions we discuss.

Hannah Lant

Assistant Instructional Professor, Chemistry

Hannah Lant is an Assistant Instructional Professor in the Department of Chemistry. She greatly enjoys working with the wide diversity of students she teaches: first year undergraduates launching their scientific explorations in the General Chemistry series, senior Chemistry majors in their laboratory capstone course Experimental Physical Chemistry, and non-STEM students in her Chemistry of Artists’ Materials course in the Physical Sciences Core. She promotes scientific literacy skills at all levels through experiential laboratory exercises and strives to foster friendly learning environments that uphold the values of mutual respect, community, and inclusion.

Shaunna McLeod

Assistant Instructional Professor, Chemistry

Shaunna McLeod joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago as an Assistant Instructional Professor in Autumn 2020 after completing her PhD in Chemistry at Northwestern University. During her graduate studies, Shaunna developed as an educator through programming at the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching, serving as a Graduate Teaching Fellow and Teaching Consultant. At UChicago, Shaunna teaches in the Comprehensive General Chemistry sequence, a set of introductory chemistry courses that serves 300-400 undergraduate students each quarter. She also designed and taught a new Physical Sciences general education course, the Chemistry of Food and Cooking, which focuses on building science literacy skills for non-science majors. Shaunna's pedagogical interests include active learning strategies, inclusive assessment practices, and teaching assistant training and development. 

Amy Nussbaum

Assistant Instructional Professor, Data Science Institute

Amy Nussbaum joined the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago in Autumn 2022. She teaches a wide variety of courses across the data science curriculum, including introductory courses in data science and machine learning as well as mathematical methods in data science. No matter the content, she strives to create an inclusive environment where all students can learn both the skills they need to succeed as data scientists as well as how to communicate their findings. She loves that University of Chicago students want to learn and seeing all of the ways they challenge themselves! 

Lisa Rosen

Associate Senior Instructional Professor, Committee on Education

Lisa Rosen’s research focuses on the relationship between education and social inequality and the social context of urban schooling. She is co-author of The Ambitious Elementary School, a 2017 book which examines a radical new model for elementary school organization that approaches the social causes of educational inequality head-on. As Director of Instructional Programs in the Committee on Education, Dr. Rosen is involved in the design and academic administration of the Committee’s curricular offerings at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. These programs include an undergraduate minor in Education and Society and a certificate program for MA students. She teaches discussion based, seminar-style courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, including “Education and Social Inequality,” “Schooling and Identity,” and “Language, Culture and Education.” Her pedagogical goals include learning new techniques from her fellow Pedagogy Fellows, expanding her repertoire of strategies for assessing student learning, and deepening her capacity to support the professional learning of other instructors in the Education and Society program. She loves teaching the students who choose her classes because of the intensity and passion they bring to class discussions and their commitment to helping improve educational outcomes and opportunities for students from marginalized communities. 

Jon Clindaniel 

Assistant Senior Instructional Professor & Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies, Computational Social Science 
Jon received his PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University in 2019 and started teaching in the MA Program in Computational Social Science soon after. His research and teaching broadly centers around articulating anthropological theory with computational methodologies. To this end, Jon teaches highly interdisciplinary classes on topics as far afield as high performance computing and Peircean semiotics. In his classes, Jon is particularly passionate about engaging students through active learning strategies. As a part of his role as Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Computational Social Science program, he is currently focused on designing computational social science courses and curriculum with an emphasis on undergraduate pedagogy.  

Maeve Hooper 

Assistant Senior Instructional Professor; Director of the German Language Program 
Maeve Hooper oversees all aspects of the German language program at the University of Chicago, including curricular design and articulation, assessment development, and the pedagogical training of graduate students. She works closely with her fellow instructional faculty members in the German, Yiddish, and Norwegian language programs, and greatly appreciates the collaborative spirit with which we approach language pedagogy in our department. As an instructor, she is committed to helping students at all levels of German develop language proficiency and intercultural competence through a task-based, communicative approach. She teaches at every level of the program, though most often in the second-year sequence. Most recently, Dr. Hooper developed an intermediate course that prepares students to discuss and analyze, in German, works of art in their historical and cultural contexts. She received her PhD in Germanic Studies from the University of Chicago in 2018. Dr. Hooper’s scholarly work has focused primarily on German Romanticism, Poetic Realism, and narratology. 

Russell Johnson 

Assistant Director, Undergraduate Religious Studies Program & Core Sequence, Divinity School 
Russell Johnson’s research focuses on religious ethics and the philosophy of communication, specifically the ways “us versus them” frameworks shape people's imaginations and behavior in social conflicts. Several of the courses he teaches, including “Star Wars and Religion” and “Villains: Evil in Philosophy, Religion, and Film,” analyze popular films to consider the tendency to think about political conflict in terms of good guys versus bad guys, which often oversimplifies the moral landscape. He has also taught courses in the Humanities Core and is currently helping develop and teach in the new SOSC Core sequence, “Religion: Cosmos, Conscience, and Community.” One of his goals as a teacher is to help students realize that ethics, religion, and philosophy are not abstract topics “out there.” They can be found in the video games we play, the news stories we read, the memes we share, and the decisions we make every day. Dr. Johnson finds that UChicago students are terrific at drawing connections between centuries-old ideas and present-day culture, and that conservations in class always enrich his appreciation for the texts we read and the questions we discuss. 

Sarah Johnson 

Senior Lecturer in Law, Letters, and Society 
Sarah Johnson taught her first class at Chicago in 2008 as a teaching intern in the Social Sciences Core. Since then, she has taught in the Classics of Social and Political Thought sequence many times, first as a graduate-student lecturer and then as a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows (2017–20). Although she continues to teach in this sequence, her primary teaching responsibilities are now in the Law, Letters, and Society program, an interdisciplinary major in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division. Most of Sarah’s courses focus on law and political economy, including the two-part Theories of Capitalism sequence that she designed for the program and a research seminar that prepares third-year students for the demands of writing a BA thesis. In addition to teaching these courses, she oversees the program’s thesis requirement and developed the curriculum for its BA Seminar. She is keen to learn more about effective research instruction. Sarah earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2015 and was a visiting assistant professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College from 2015 to 2017.

Valerie Levan 

Assistant Senior Instructional Professor, Humanities Core Pedagogy Coordinator 
Valerie Levan began her teaching career as a graduate student at the University of Chicago teaching Elementary German for Beginners. She is trained in German language pedagogy and writing pedagogy, and served as a Writing Intern and Academic and Professional Writing Lector before beginning a full-time position as an Instructor in the Humanities Core. As a graduate of the Department of Comparative Literature, Valerie enjoys her work in the Core for the continued opportunities it provides to encourage students to seek connections and resonance among a diverse range of texts. Valerie also serves as the Humanities Core Pedagogy Coordinator and in that position works to create programming that gives new and experienced instructors a chance to reflect on and improve their teaching practice. Valerie has read The Odyssey seventeen times (and counting!), and when not teaching or thinking about teaching, she enjoys spending time with her husband, two daughters, and five chickens. 

Shaunna McLeod 

Assistant Instructional Professor, Chemistry 
Shaunna joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago as an Assistant Instructional Professor in Autumn 2020 after completing her PhD in Chemistry at Northwestern University. During her graduate studies, Shaunna developed as an educator through programming at the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching, serving as a Graduate Teaching Fellow and Teaching Consultant. At UChicago, Shaunna teaches in the Comprehensive General Chemistry sequence, a set of introductory chemistry courses that serves 300-400 undergraduate students each quarter. She also designed and taught a new Physical Sciences general education course, the Chemistry of Food and Cooking, which focuses on building science literacy skills for non-science majors. Shaunna's pedagogical interests include active learning strategies, inclusive assessment practices, and teaching assistant training and development. 

Lisa Rosen 

Associate Senior Instructional Professor & Associate Director of Instructional Programs in the Committee on Education 
Lisa Rosen’s research focuses on the relationship between education and social inequality and the social context of urban schooling. She is co-author of The Ambitious Elementary School, a 2017 book which examines a radical new model for elementary school organization that approaches the social causes of educational inequality head-on. As Associate Director of Instructional Programs in the Committee on Education, Dr. Rosen is involved in the design and academic administration of the Committee’s curricular offerings at both the graduate and undergraduate level. These programs include an undergraduate minor in Education and Society, which she co-directs, as well as a certificate program for MA students. She teaches discussion based, seminar-style courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, including “Education and Social Inequality,” “Schooling and Identity,” and “Language, Culture and Education.” Her pedagogical goals include learning new techniques from her fellow Pedagogy Fellows, expanding her repertoire of strategies for assessing student learning, and deepening her capacity to support the professional learning of other instructors in the Education and Society program. She loves teaching the students who choose her classes because of the intensity and passion they bring to class discussions and their commitment to helping improve educational outcomes and opportunities for students from marginalized communities. 

Scott Snyder 

Professor of Chemistry and Deputy Dean for Professional Programs in the Physical Sciences Division 
Scott’s research group seeks to advance the power of synthetic organic chemistry to better create molecules of biological significance by developing new reagents and reactions that can readily convert simple starting materials into more complex entities. On the educational front, Scott typically teaches 200 students each year in our introductory organic chemistry sequence and leads graduate courses in complex molecule synthesis and reaction development; his principal goals are to help students understand the power of the field to solve major societal challenges while also highlighting the frontiers where further research is needed. He also devotes much effort to shaping the face of instruction in organic chemistry worldwide, both through his co-authorship of several graduate texts as well as three editions of the undergraduate text Organic Chemistry published by John Wiley and Sons. He is also a co-author of a primer aimed at assisting new faculty in the sciences at R01 universities in their teaching entitled Teach Better, Save Time, and Have More Fun, published by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA). For these and other endeavors, Scott has received several awards, including a 2017 Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education and the 2022 STAR Award from RCSA. Scott was also recently appointed to the University of Chicago Health Professions Council, where he will provide advice on how best to guide the educational preparation of our premedical students for a career in the health professions.