Pedagogy Fellows Program
The Pedagogy Fellows Program (PFP) for faculty and instructors supports UChicago academics in developing, extending, and revising fundamental teaching competencies. Selected faculty and instructors form a cohort of Fellows of the CCTL and engage in a series of practice-oriented workshops organized around peer-to-peer discussions, along with classroom observation and formative feedback provided by both other Fellows and CCTL pedagogy specialists. In parallel and in conversation with these activities, Fellows design (or revise) a course syllabus, sharing and discussing key elements as part of the workshops along the way. The PFP draws on the experiences and reflections of program participants, facilitating the sharing of ideas and strategies with colleagues from across the curriculum, and informing these conversations with insights from the literature on teaching and learning. Newer faculty and instructors benefit from the support and insights generated by the pedagogical community of practice, while more experienced instructors benefit from the opportunity to reflect on their approach and share experiences and insights with colleagues from across the University.
Faculty and instructors who complete the program receive $1000 in professional development funds to capitalize on the new pedagogical insights cultivated by the experience. Those who complete the PFP have the option to apply to be an Associate Pedagogy Fellow, affiliating with the Center for an additional year by providing mentorship to the year’s cohort of Pedagogy Fellows and engaging in other activities to advance the work of the Center.
The application for the PFP opens over the summer for the upcoming academic year. Contact Amanda M. Jungels (amanda.jungels@uchicago.edu) at any time with questions.
Current Pedagogy Fellows
Andrew Brandel
Associate Instructional Professor, Social Sciences Collegiate Division
Andrew Brandel is an anthropologist who teaches in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, primarily in the Democracy and Classics of Social and Political Thought Core sequences. For the past decade, he has focused on teaching interdisciplinary seminars that draw on a diverse range of intellectual and political traditions and emphasize the development of critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. He encourages his students to see themselves as actively involved in the process of knowledge production and to continually reflect on what they stand to learn from a deep engagement with challenging texts and ideas, especially when they disagree with their authors. For Andrew, the most exciting thing about working with students is helping them to strengthen their own voices while learning that this only happens in the company of others.
Darrel Chia
Assistant Instructional Professor, Master of Arts Program in the Humanities
Darrel Chia co-teaches the MAPH Core, as well as courses in 20th/21st century literature in English, post-colonial studies, and gender and sexuality. Darrell’s courses emphasize discussion-based learning. He is looking to keep innovating new courses that focus on developing students’ skills in critical analysis and research. He enjoys the curiosity and independence of our students and meeting them where they are.
Subhadip Chowdhury
Neubauer Phoenix STEM Assistant Instructional Professor, Physical Sciences Collegiate Division and Mathematics Department
Subhadip Chowdhury has taught a wide range of theoretical and applied math courses, from introductory calculus to senior thesis, employing innovative approaches like flipped classrooms, project-based learning, and mastery-based and technique-based grading. Currently, he advises the Neubauer Phoenix STEM scholars and is developing a training program in the Math department for undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants in the pedagogy and practice of collaborative learning, recontextualizing the Chemistry Department’s model. He is interested in developing discovery-based, active, and inclusive learning environments that effectively engage students from diverse backgrounds and promote constructivist learning with a growth mindset. His favorite aspect of the program has been the enthusiasm of its participants—exceptional math majors who aspire to careers in academia and are genuinely passionate about improving their teaching.
Seleeke Flingai
Assistant Instructional Professor, Public Health Sciences
Seleeke Flingai’s teaching and applied research are focused on the intersections of racism and capitalism with urban spatial processes and health. He teaches two core courses ("Foundations of Public Health" and "Social Inequalities in Health: Race/Ethnicity and Class in the U.S. Context") and two electives ("Introduction to Urban Health" and "GIS and Spatial Analysis for Public Health") in the Master of Public Health program. His foundation in biomedicine and public health, alongside his training and professional experience in urban planning and social policy, have led to an interdisciplinary and inclusive teaching approach rooted in social change and anti-oppression. Using critical pedagogical principles as his foundation, he hopes to develop a variety of community building, teaching, and assessment strategies to provide public health students with the tools to build a critical consciousness around the social determinants of health, recognize the role of power in public health practice and policy, and engage in critical self-reflection and informed action. As a new instructional member of the University, he is incredibly excited to engage with students and help them grow as critical thinkers and doers.
Xuanyao Liu
Assistant Professor, Section of Genetic Medicine, School of Medicine
Xuanyao Liu’s research interests lie in the intersection of statistics and genetics, and the courses she teaches are also highly interdisciplinary. The students taking her classes also come from diverse backgrounds, which is fun, but also challenging to implement effective and fair assessments. Xuanyao is eager to learn new pedagogical methods for implementing and assessing student learning in a highly interdisciplinary setting.
Ekaterina Lukianova
Associate Director and Assistant Senior Instructional Professor, Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse
Katya Lukianova teaches a variety of undergraduate courses about public discourse, dialogue, and deliberation through the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse. The Parrhesia curriculum is rooted in the UChicago Principles of Freedom of Expression and gives students grounding in the theory and practice of democratic public discourse. Katya approaches her classes as collaborative learning experiences, where students engage with issues that immediately concern them. Katya joined UChicago in the fall of 2023. Prior to that, she worked at the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio, and at Saint-Petersburg State University in Russia. She enjoys teaching UChicago students because of their curiosity and willingness to take up a challenge. She also appreciates the diversity of the student body and the richness of the experiences that students bring to the classroom. In her teaching, she is experimenting with course designs that would help her students cultivate academic rigor alongside civic agency.
Agnes Malinowska
Assistant Instructional Professor, Master of Arts Program in the Humanities and English
Agnes Malinowska teaches courses for MA and undergraduate students centered on gender and sexuality, especially in relation to 20th- and 21st-century American literature, film, and cultural history. She is particularly interested in queer theory and cultural production, as well as the history and politics of social and biological reproduction, motherhood, and gendered labor in American culture. In her capacity as MAPH preceptor, Agnes teaches students graduate-level research and writing skills over the course of the MA thesis process. As a teacher, Agnes aims to build a collegial, enthusiastic, and open classroom environment where students feel comfortable and excited to articulate their ideas and learn from one another. At the same time, she strives to expose students to new and challenging ways of seeing the world, whether in theory or fiction, while helping to cultivate their skills as thinkers, readers, and writers. Agnes loves teaching and advising UChicago students for their deep curiosity, openness, commitment, and enthusiasm.
Carolyn Martineau
Instructional Professor, Biological Sciences and Neurobiology
Carolyn Martineau has a background in cell and developmental biology. She teaches Topics and Inquiry-Based courses for non-majors in the Life Sciences Core and elective courses for Neuroscience majors. She feels privileged to work with an amazing and curious cohort of students and colleagues to achieve the aim of enhancing student engagement through active learning and critical inquiry. She also strives to cultivate skills in the effective evaluation and communication of scientific information for all audiences.
Ryan McShane
Assistant Instructional Professor, Statistics
Ryan McShane teaches a variety of statistics courses, emphasizing a contemporary computational framework with R and Quarto, which enable reproducible and literate programming. He designed and introduced a modern R programming course for the Statistics curriculum where students learn to utilize version control software, engage in functional programming, and wrangle and visualize data. Previously, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Amherst College, Ryan implemented a flipped classroom model, along with paired assignments, group projects, and other active learning strategies. At UChicago, he aims to preserve a small classroom atmosphere while exploring ways to scale his approach. Dr. McShane appreciates that many UChicago students care deeply about why something works rather than simply how to use it.
Clara Mitchell
Writing Instructor in the College
Clara Mitchell is in her fourth year as a Specialist with the Writing Program. She works primarily with first-years in the Poetry and Media Aesthetics Cores, and has also taught Professional Writing (or Little Red Schoolhouse) to both graduate and undergraduate students since 2020. Her goal is to ensure an inclusive learning environment for students, who are wonderfully curious and creative thinkers.
Brianne A. Painia
Assistant Instructional Professor of Sociology
Brianne Painia's courses include “American Religion, Gender and Race”, “Qualitative Methods: Coding and Thematic Analysis,” and “Black Social Thought” at the graduate level. She has taught introductory, undergraduate, and upper-level courses in African and African American Studies, presented her research at academic conferences, and guest lectured on the topics of race, critical theory, and qualitative methodology. Her research interests include black gender performance, black social theory, and the intersection of religion and feminism in religious communities, with her most recent works focusing on religious women’s attitudes regarding feminism and religious gender roles.
Ali Sanaei
Associate Instructional Professor, Master of Arts in Computational Social Science Program
Ali Sanaei teaches courses such as "Perspectives on Computational Analysis," "Perspectives on Computational Modeling," and "Public Opinion Research in Practice." In his courses, he combines advanced computational tools with social science questions. Ali is dedicated to developing pedagogical methods that foster critical thinking and promoting cooperative, active learning environments. He takes pride in creating engaging, hands-on learning experiences that encourage students to collaborate and apply their knowledge to real-world research questions. Ali enjoys working with UChicago students, particularly valuing their intellectual curiosity and analytical skills. His research focuses on international security and public opinion.
Dmitri Talapin
Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor, Chemistry
Headshot and bio coming soon.
James Vaughn
Assistant Instructional Professor, Social Sciences Collegiate Division
James Vaughn teaches in the Social Sciences Core and the Civilization Studies Core in the College as well as in the Department of History. James most enjoys teaching the same group of students in a small seminar setting throughout the academic year in the Power, Identity, Resistance sequence, in which foundational works of social and political theory are read and discussed. Central to his pedagogy is the conviction that one must learn how and why others think what they do--in particular, how and why writers understand social and political life in the way that they do--in order to be able to learn to think for oneself. James is a historian of the British Empire and the Atlantic world during the eighteenth century.
Mary (Ella) Wilhoit
Associate Instructional Professor in Anthropology
Ella is an Associate Instructional Professor of Anthropology in the MAPSS program. In addition to MAPSS’s core course on social science research paradigms, she teaches courses on ethnographic research methods, on sex and social science inquiry, on parasocial and more-than-human ethnography, and on gender and popular culture. Her research has focused on these and other themes, particularly highlighting the gendered nature of rural labor and kinwork and the gendered assumptions inherent in discursive constructions of the rural. She is committed to pedagogical approaches that foreground mindful, open-minded and exploratory engagement with historical and contemporary texts and that prioritize diverse contributions to knowledge(s) including indigenous, Black feminist, queer-ecological, and posthumanist thinkers. She particularly enjoys investigating new and alternative modalities for research and representation with students.
Jonathan Williams
Assistant Clinical Professor, Data Science Institute
Jonathan teaches courses on statistics, leadership and consulting, and academic research within the Master of Science in Applied Data Science (MS-ADS) program. His students are professionals or pre-professionals who come to the University from different paths than those expected by traditional teaching formats, and he strives to connect his students to the material using reference points they find more relatable and more professionally relevant. He hopes that this program will help him to optimize remote learning experiences and increase academic integrity through greater student "buy-in" of instructor goals.
Past Pedagogy Fellows
- Yukiko Asai, Assistant Instructional Professor, Harris School of Public Policy
- Crystal Beiersdorfer, Lecturer, Department of Cinema & Media Studies, Program in Media Arts & Design, and the Humanities Collegiate Division
- Amanda Brock, Assistant Instructional Professor, Biological Sciences Collegiate Division
- Kale Davies, Assistant Instructional Professor, Mathematics Department
- Caterina Fugazzola, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor, Global Studies
- Daragh Grant, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor and Co-Chair, Classics of Social and Political Thought
- Tori Gross, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor of Anthropology and Assistant Director of the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS)
- Esmael J. Haddadian, Instructional Professor, Biological Sciences Collegiate Division
- Jieun Kim, Senior Lecturer in Korean Language
- Sarah B. King, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
- Hannah Lant, Assistant Instructional Professor of Chemistry
- Hannah Morgan, Assistant Instructional Professor, Department of Computer Science
- Amy Nussbaum, Assistant Instructional Professor, Data Science Institute
- Mehrnoush Soroush, Assistant Professor of Landscape Archaeology, Director of the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes
- Zhao Wang, Assistant Instructional Professor, Master of Arts in Computational Social Science Program
- Rui Zhao, Associate Instructional Professor, Economics
- Nicole G. Burgoyne, Assistant Instructional Professor of Germanic Studies and the Humanities Collegiate Division
- Christopher M. Clapp, Assistant Instructional Professor, Harris School of Public Policy
- Jon Clindaniel, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor & Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies, Computational Social Science
- Marshall Jean, Assistant Instructional Professor of Sociology (MAPSS)
- Sarah Johnson, Senior Lecturer in Law, Letters, and Society
- Jessica Kirzane, Assistant Instructional Professor in Yiddish in the Department of Germanic Studies
- Jeffrey A. Levy, Assistant Instructional Professor, Harris School of Public Policy
- Fei Liu, Assistant Instructional Professor of Statistics
- Jon Satrom, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor and Associate Director, Media Arts & Design in the Department of Cinema & Media Studies
- Colin Shelton, Assistant Instructional Professor and Language Program Coordinator for Latin and Ancient Greek
- S Simmons, Assistant Instructional Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
- Scott A. Snyder, Professor of Chemistry and Deputy Dean for Professional Programs in the Physical Sciences Division
- Alison Anastasio, Assistant Instructional Professor, Program on the Global Environment
- Colleen M. Grogan, Professor, Crown Family School & Director of the Graduate Program for Health Policy Administration & Policy (GPHAP)
- Maeve Hooper, Director of the German Language Program & Senior Assistant Instructional Professor, Germanic Studies
- Russell P. Johnson, Assistant Director, Undergraduate Religious Studies Program & Core Sequence, Divinity School
- Elizabeth W. Kovar, Associate Senior Instructional Professor, Biological Sciences Collegiate Division
- Valerie Levan, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor in the College & Humanities Core Pedagogy Coordinator
- Xiaoying Liu, Associate Senior Instructional Professor, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
- Shaunna McLeod, Assistant Instructional Professor, Chemistry
- Gina Pieters, Assistant Instructional Professor, Economics
- Lisa Rosen, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor & Associate Director of Instructional Programs, The Committee on Education
- Adam Shaw, Associate Senior Instructional Professor, Computer Science
- Ardaman Shergill, Assistant Professor of Medicine
- Matthias Staisch, Associate Director & Assistant Senior Instructional Professor, Committee on International Relations
- Megan Tusler, Assistant Instructional Professor, Master of Arts Program in the Humanities
- Erin Galgay Walsh, Assistant Professor, New Testament & Early Christian Literature, Divinity School
- Jancey Wickstrom, Assistant Instructional Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
- Tyler J. Zimmer, Assistant Instructional Professor, Philosophy