Pedagogy Fellows Program

Naina Balepur teaches required and elective courses for the major at the Data Science Institute. Before joining UChicago, she received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she had the opportunity to serve as instructor for an introductory theory course. During that time, she became interested in more transparent and inclusive teaching practices, and she hopes to build on those as she transitions from theoretical computer science into the dynamic field of Data Science. This year especially, she is focused on restructuring assignments to more faithfully capture how students grow and learn in the age of AI. 

For the past three years, Julia Brown has primarily taught the Classics of Social and Political Thought sequence in the SOSC Core. Starting this Autumn, she will also teach the new Core writing seminar Inquiry, Conversation, Argument. In her seminars, students engage with rich and challenging texts. Slow, deep reading forms the basis of discussion and students’ explorative and argumentative writing. She aims for students to develop a new relationship to the struggles and frustrations of reading and writing - one in which they see these struggles as necessary for the exhilaration of intellectual inquiry rather than as inconveniences to be outsourced. Julia values teaching at UChicago because so many students are willing participants in this endeavor; they are eager to engage in the “serious play” that is intellectual inquiry. 

Julie Camarda teaches courses in the Chicago Center for Writing (CCW), such as "Inquiry, Conversation, Argument" (ICA), and in the Humanities Core. With her colleagues at the CCW, she works on issues such as course development and curricular assessment. As a teacher, she tries to help students take pleasure in hard work, and to invest themselves in their own intellectual development. 

Frankie Chan teaches a range of undergraduate mathematics courses, including single-variable calculus, multivariable calculus, and linear algebra, typically in sections capped at thirty students. He is interested in rethinking what to ask students to do outside of class, since a lot of standard problem sets can now be handed to a chatbot and still come back correct, and in developing better ways to visualize the concepts at the center of these courses, where the right picture often does more than another line of algebra. Frankie joined the Pedagogy Fellows Program to work on these questions alongside colleagues who face versions of them in very different classrooms. What he most enjoys about teaching UChicago students is their dedication to a curriculum that can be quite dense, and he wants the courses he teaches to reward that effort rather than simply demand it. 

A philosopher by training, Florian Grosser primarily teaches in the HUMA Core sequences Human Being and Citizen and Philosophical Perspectives. In the classroom, he aims to initiate and facilitate genuine conversations with and among students that are firmly grounded in the course readings. Working with UChicago students, Florian especially values their openness to engaging with new ideas and viewpoints, even when doing so challenges their own assumptions and ways of thinking. 

Hannah Hamilton teaches MAPSS’s required Perspectives course and courses that touch on her own research interests, including statistics, longitudinal research, and how the need to belong is related to physical and mental health. She enjoys seeing students develop their research skills in these classes and is always impressed with the discussions in her seminar course. This year, she is in the process of designing a course on digital relationships, which has been a frequent topic at recent psychology conferences and which she believes will stimulate interesting ideas for students’ future research. 

Sarah Kunjummen teaches graduate and undergraduate students in methods / writing-focused classes, particularly focused on the skills needed to do graduate research in humanities disciplines, as well as courses exploring issues in 16th and 17th century British literature and seminars that track questions related to literary representability over a longer time horizon. As a teacher, Sarah tries to equip students to receive texts from past, often deeply unfamiliar, worlds with curiosity and confidence, and to reflect on and develop their own tastes and values as a reader. She loves the warm unpretentious engagement that University of Chicago students, across disciplines and levels of expertise, typically bring to the classroom. 

Darren Kusar is an Assistant Instructional Professor in the Chicago Center for Writing, where he teaches writing-intensive courses and works with students across disciplines as they develop as writers and thinkers. Trained as an Italianist, his research focuses on early modern Italian literature and culture. He has taught literature and language courses as well as research-based writing, with subjects ranging from early modern Italian culture to questions of truth and deception. His teaching centers on helping students understand writing as a process of inquiry through which ideas take shape and become more precise. He is particularly interested in assignment design and revision, as well as in finding ways to make the intellectual work of writing more visible to students. He most enjoys the intellectual curiosity of UChicago students and the seriousness with which they approach difficult questions, especially when a classroom gives them room to experiment with ideas, revise their thinking, and arrive at arguments that feel genuinely their own. 

Omri Matarasso studies and teaches the medieval history of Christianity with a special focus on the Middle East. His teaching is primarily informed by two goals: first, to encourage students to reflect on big historical questions by considering how seemingly incidental evidence from the past illuminates broader historical transformations; second, to engage critically with their own positional and conceptual distance from surviving past evidence as key methodological concepts that shape one’s understanding of history. Omri’s recent courses include "Eastern Christianity: The First Thousand Years," "The Making of the Christian West," and "Saints and Hagiographies of the Medieval World." 

David A. Peterson teaches in the MA Program in Computational Social Science, where he teaches courses on research design, world politics, and computational modeling. As a teacher, his primary pedagogical goal is to develop students’ ability to think critically about research projects as wholistic scientific and rhetorical enterprises. This means not just learning new methodological tools, but gaining an understanding of how to employ them to help pose deep and answerable questions, theorize the social world in ways that account for causal complexity, and match empirical analysis to theory. To that end, he values co-creation of knowledge in class and strives to give students the opportunity to think creatively and experiment with the research process in the classroom and in assignments. UChicago is the ideal place to pursue this kind of pedagogy, as students are consistently motivated to ambitious and complex projects and proactive about seeking the means to answer big, fundamental questions about social life. 

Nicolas Portugal teaches French across the introductory and intermediate curriculum, including intensive language courses, and contributes to ongoing curricular redesign in the French language program. His teaching is grounded in proficiency-oriented, communicative, and inclusive approaches that encourage students to use French meaningfully while developing the confidence to take intellectual and linguistic risks. He is particularly interested in experiential learning and in the thoughtful integration of emerging technologies, including conversational AI and immersive tools, to expand opportunities for interaction and prepare students for authentic communication beyond the classroom. He especially values UChicago students’ curiosity, intellectual ambition, and willingness to think critically not only about language and culture, but also about how they learn. 

Diana Schwartz Francisco is a historian of Greater Latin America, whose teaching and research consider issues of environmental transformation, race, territory, and infrastructure over time and space. She teaches courses in the Core Colonizations and Introduction to Latin American Civilization sequences, the BA Proseminar in Latin American & Caribbean Studies, as well as undergraduate and graduate history courses on Indigenous Politics in Latin America, the US-Mexico Borderlands, and Development & Environment. In her role as Program Adviser in Latin American & Caribbean Studies (LACS), she oversees the undergraduate LACS major and minor as well as the LACS Graduate Certificate, and mentors students through their respective programs. Her pedagogical approach centers and builds on students' knowledge and experiences to expand their repertoire of literacies while they unpack the meanings of history--including how we know what we know about the past. What Diana loves most about teaching UChicago students is their intellectual curiosity, courage, and commitment to learning in community. She is consistently impressed by how well they listen to and teach one another. 

Beniada joined UChicago in 2018 as a Postdoctoral fellow, during which time she taught a variety of courses for math majors. As an AIP, she has taught a variety of Calculus courses, as well as the Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences sequence. In the next academic year, she will take on the role of the coordinator for our lower Calculus sequence (Math 130s).  She is passionate about mathematics and enjoys sharing her own understanding of it, as well as fostering a sense of community within my courses. She is always looking for new ways to grow as an educator, and to better support her students in their mathematical journey.

Adarsh teaches engineering design (undergrad), fluid mechanics, and experimental electrochemistry lab, and advise PME masters students in the Energy and Sustainability track. He is an enthusiastic teacher who loves making engineering feel tangible, useful, and connected to the real world. Adarsh is especially interested in developing better ways to connect lecture, laboratory, and project-based learning, make mathematically rigorous courses feel more engaging and relevant, and create more inclusive learning environments for students with very different academic backgrounds and levels of preparation. He is excited to learn from colleagues across disciplines, exchange ideas about teaching, and develop practical strategies that help UChicago students participate confidently, ask questions, and tackle challenging, open-ended problems. 

Jingshu teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in statistical methods, multivariate analysis, causal inference, and single-cell genomics. She also mentors undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students in research. As a teacher, she aims to connect statistical methodology with practical applications, helping students develop both the mathematical skills to understand methods and the ability to translate real-world problems into statistical questions. Through the Pedagogy Fellows Program, she plans to redesign STAT 32950, Multivariate Statistical Analysis: Applications and Techniques, to bring these complementary skills together through more interactive learning.