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CTL's Graduate Fellowship for Teaching Excellence program honors graduate students who are dedicated to excellent teaching and is designed to foster conversations about teaching to help graduate students develop as teachers. Graduate Fellows facilitate teaching workshops in their departments and across the university, observe graduate students teaching and offer feedback, and meet regularly as a fellows group to discuss teaching practices.

Candidates for this fellowship must be nominated by their department; the call for nominations goes out to graduate chairs in the spring semester. For more information about the Graduate Fellows Program contact Ian Petrie.

Current Graduate Fellows for Teaching Excellence

Addison Buxton-Martin
Biology
Addison Buxton-Martin

Biology

Addison (he/him) is a fourth year PhD candidate in the department of Biology in the School of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the transcriptomic basis of interactions between plants and mutualistic bacteria when the host plant is also colonized by pathogenic nematodes. Before coming to Penn, Addison taught high school biology for several years. During this time he received his M.Ed and was a part time administrator for an interdisciplinary, project-based learning academic program at the school where he taught. Prior to teaching high school, Addison was an outdoor educator and tropical field ecology research intern. At Penn, he has served as instructor, teaching assistant, tutor, and grader for various biology courses and organizes the annual High School Science Day put on by the Department of Biology.

Gregory Campbell
Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics
Gregory Campbell

Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics

Greg is a fifth year PhD student in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM). He is studying soft pneumatic actuation for applications in robotics and is advised by Dr. Mark Yim and Dr. James Pikul. Greg has served as a TA for undergraduate dynamics (MEAM211) and graduate mechatronic design (MEAM510). He aims to develop and employ teaching practices that promote classroom community, contextualized transfer of knowledge, and student-centered learning. Prior to his PhD, Greg completed his BS in ME at Villanova University and his MS in ME at Stanford University. He was previously employed as a forensic engineer at Exponent consulting. 

Lourdes Contreras
Italian Studies
Lourdes Contreras

Italian Studies

Lourdes Contreras is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies department. Her academic interests encompass the themes of exile and ecological representations in women-written Italian literature. Her interest in displacement and rootedness stem from the presence of the root metaphor in Italian literature from the fifteenth century to the contemporary period and the implications that this metaphor has on broader political and theoretical issues. She is interested in creating interdisciplinary models of language pedagogy in language classrooms and building equitable and inclusive lessons and syllabi in both content and language courses. She has contributed to the The Pedagogical Repository of Italian Media Activities (PRIMA), an open education resource for Italian teachers and students that provides authentic artistic content and diversifies representation in language materials. Lourdes has also presented at the American Association of Teachers of Italian on the inclusion of Ecocriticism and eco-conscious content in Italian literature courses. Lourdes grew up in Chicago and completed her BA in Italian and political science at DePaul University.

Jaydee Edwards
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Jaydee Edwards

Earth & Environmental Sciences

Jaydee is a 4th year PhD candidate from the department of Earth and Environmental Science in the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS). Her research focuses on a sub-category of microplastics known as tire- and road-wear particles. Currently, she studies these particles in road dust from the streets of Philadelphia and will follow the transport of the particles via stormwater runoff into the Schuylkill River. She is deeply committed to research that studies anthropogenic pollution through geochemistry and mineralogy. Through her department, she has been a TA for classes like Intro to Environmental Science and Intro to Geology. She looks forward to engaging with graduate students across Penn and is particularly interested in creating engaging and safe atmospheres for students.

Ari Gzesh
Social Policy & Practice
Ari Gzesh

Social Policy & Practice

Ari S. Gzesh, MSW is pursuing a PhD in Social Welfare at UPenn’s School of Social Policy and Practice, and is a Fellow in Leadership Education and Adolescent Health at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. They are earning certificates in both Implementation Science and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, so as to promote integration between social sciences and humanities, particularly in the use of theory for conceptualizing research design. Gzesh has been awarded the Penn Marymount Fellowship, as well as funding through the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, and the Eidos LGBTQ+ Health Research Initiative. Prior to their doctoral studies, Gzesh engaged in direct practice with marginalized young people for over a decade, as both an educator and therapist. A Teach for America alumni, Gzesh spent eight years in traditional and alternative classrooms, spanning from secondary schools to San Quentin Prison to domestic violence shelters. After earning a Master of Social Work from Columbia University, they worked as a community-based clinician in the Bay Area of California, supporting system-involved youth experiencing sexual exploitation, substance use, and housing instability. 

Gzesh is passionate about improving psychosocial and health outcomes for sexual/gender minority youth, by exploring how chosen families can provide corrective experiences for past attachment ruptures, embodied oppression, and complex trauma. Gzesh uses critical mixed methods to leverage cultural wealth embedded in queer communities for research-informed practice and practice-informed research.

Liz Hallgren
Communication
Liz Hallgren

Communication

Liz is a third-year doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication where she studies the intersection of collective memory and national identity as it plays out in (and is enabled by) the news media. She is especially interested in the linkages between journalism and culture, and what these linkages mean for political subjectivity, the public sphere, and democracy globally. So far at Penn, Liz has had the opportunity to serve as a teaching fellow for required Communication survey courses, like Critical Approaches to Popular Culture, taught by Dr. Jessa Lingel, as well as elective courses like Critical Perspectives in Journalism Studies, taught by Dr. Barbie Zelizer. Liz earned her bachelor’s degree in International Studies and English Literature from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota (where her love of teaching began with a stint as an undergraduate writing tutor!).

Kyndall Nicholas
Neuroscience
Kyndall Nicholas

Neuroscience

Kyndall received her B.S. in Biochemistry with a minor in psychology from Hampton University in Hampton, VA. Kyndall is a former DI volleyball player, which sparked her interests in concussions and traumatic brain injury. As a Neuroscience PhD candidate in Dr. Kacy Cullen's lab, she is researching how diet influences post traumatic brain injury damage. Kyndall serves as the Ernest E. Just Biomedical Society President, a Center for Undergraduate & Research Fellowships (CURF) Graduate Fellow, Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Fellow, and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellow. Kyndall works with The Franklin Institute to organize annual CRISPR workshops for high schoolers, mentors high school students internationally and nationally through Lumiere Education, and mentors undergraduate students on their projects in her lab. Kyndall was born and raised in central Maryland, so in her free time she loves to eat crabs, go to Ravens football games, and go on bike rides.

Aoife O’Farrell
Bioengineering
Aoife O’Farrell

Bioengineering

Aoife is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the BE department advised by Dr. Arjun Raj. Her work focuses on quantifying cellular memory, with future applications in epigenetic immunoengineering. Aoife holds a bachelor's degree in Bioengineering: Biotechnology from the University of California, San Diego, where her work focused on the role of tumor draining lymphatics in responses to immune checkpoint blockade in HNSCC. While at Penn, Aoife has served as a teaching assistant for three bioengineering courses, and as a research mentor for two years with the Diversity Action Plan for Penn Genomics. She is particularly interested in decolonization, diversity, and inclusion in the engineering classroom, and looks forward to continuing to grow as an educator.

Artemis Panagopoulou
Computer & Information Science
Artemis Panagopoulou

Computer & Information Science

Artemis is a third-year Computer Science Ph.D. student, focusing on the multimodality and interpretability of artificial intelligence models. Prior to this, she undertook the Dual Degree in Artificial Intelligence at Penn, majoring in Computer and Cognitive Science as well as Philosophy. Concurrently, she also obtained her Master's in Computer Science.

During her time at Penn, Artemis served as a Teaching Assistant for five different computer science courses. In 2019, she was awarded the Penn Engineering Exceptional Service Award for her teaching contributions. 

She has also taught computer science at the Kohelet-Yeshiva Elementary School and South Woods State Prison, making computer science accessible to diverse communities.

Artemis aims to stimulate student interest in mathematics, logic, and computer science while overcoming any mental obstacles from past experiences. She is deeply committed to promoting a comprehensive, widespread literacy in the field of computer science.
https://artemisp.github.io/

Susanna Payne-Passmore
Music
Susanna Payne-Passmore

Music

Susanna is a third year PhD Student in Music Composition. They research collaborative improvisation, mixing electronic and acoustic sounds, and using feedback cycles as a musical sound source. At Penn, they have served as instructor for the Music Theory and Musicianship Fundamentals course and they have taught introductory and intermediate levels of this course at other institutions. As a teacher, they are interested in active learning techniques, project-based learning, integrating theory with application, and creating a more accessible academia, especially for neurodiverse and queer members of the learning community. Susanna grew up here in Philadelphia and received a BA in Music from the New College of Florida as well as an MM in Music Composition from the University of Oregon. In their free time, they enjoy studying Muay Thai, reading speculative fiction, and sipping various teas.

Miranda Sklaroff
Political Science
Miranda Sklaroff

Political Science

Miranda Sklaroff is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science. Her dissertation is on anti-eugenics as a political lens for understanding twentieth-century feminist movements and public policy. She has been a TA for a diverse array of classes including Ancient Political Thought and The Public Policy Process. In her classes, Miranda is politically and pedagogically committed to the notion that all students are already political theorists, whether or not they know it, as they try to make sense of the world and the contours of power that shape their lives. When she’s not teaching, she’s running reading groups, painting, or playing with her dogs.

Jeremy Steinberg
Religious Studies
Jeremy Steinberg

Religious Studies

Jeremy Steinberg is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the department of Religious Studies, studying the Hebrew Bible and Judaism in the ancient Greek and Roman world. His dissertation examines the ways that Greek-educated ancient Jewish writers reconceptualized the Bible in accordance with Greek and Roman notions about the nature and purpose of literature. Jeremy is teaching Gender, Sexuality & Religion in Fall 2023; previously, he has served as a TA for Religion & Sports; Gender, Sexuality & Religion; Jews & Judaism in Antiquity; and Religions of the West. Jeremy holds a BA in Religion from Haverford College and a post-baccalaureate certificate in Classical Languages from Penn.

Marcus Tomaino
Economics
Marcus Tomaino

Economics

Marcus is a fifth-year PhD student in Economics whose research is in applied microeconomic theory. After completing his undergraduate studies at UNSW Sydney, he first worked for an Australian investment bank before moving to Europe to take a derivatives trading role in Amsterdam. At Penn, Marcus has enjoyed teaching for game theory courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels; he is passionate about delivering stimulating classes that leverage interactive experiences to engage students. He will serve as a CTL TA trainer for the 2023 TA cohort, and is excited to further develop his teaching through the CTL fellowship.

Taylor Tomlinson
Chemistry
Taylor Tomlinson

Chemistry

Taylor is a second year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry. Her research focuses on post-translational modifications of tau protein, involved in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Prior to Penn, Taylor earned a BS in Chemistry and a BA in Sociology from the University of Pittsburgh. At Penn, she has been a TA for General Chemistry courses and won a departmental teaching award. She also worked for CTL as a TA Trainer, designing and leading sections of the Grading in the Sciences and Quantitative Social Sciences workshop during CTL TA Training 2023. Taylor is passionate about the interdisciplinary nature of the sciences and the humanities and finding ways to connect people and topics in the classroom.

Current Graduate Fellows for Inclusive & Equitable Teaching

Skyler Berardi
Biology
Skyler Berardi

Biology

Skyler is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in the Biology department. Her research interests broadly include studying the mechanisms that drive rapid evolution, and she is currently working on probing how manipulating environmental conditions alters evolutionary trajectories in D. melanogaster populations. In addition to her research at Penn, Skyler has worked as a TA for the biology department, served as President of the Biology Graduate Group, and mentored undergraduate and high school students through both the PennFERBS and PennLENS programs. She is also passionate about public outreach and science communication, and she has worked at the Delaware Museum of Nature & Science as a public programming intern, as well as at the Franklin Institute through Penn’s Career Exploration Fellowship. As a fellow, she is looking forward to collaborating with her peers to design best teaching practices across disciplines, and she is especially interested in shaping the curriculum and culture in STEM courses to be more welcoming and inclusive.

Yara Damaj
Political Science
Yara Damaj

Political Science

Yara is a PhD student in political theory and comparative politics researching humor in times of crisis. As a graduate student at Penn, she gained teaching experience as teaching assistant and as instructor of record. Yara’s dedication to education and student life goes beyond the classroom; she served as interim undergraduate student advisor at the political science department, and is currently a fourth year Graduate Resident Advisor at Harnwell College House. For her dedication to teaching, she received the Alvin Z. Rubinstein Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Political Science Graduate Student.

Jennifer Reiss
History
Jennifer Reiss

History

Jenny (she/her) is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History where her dissertation research combines legal, social, medical, and disability histories to explore how gender and disability were mutually constitutive in early America. At Penn she has been a TA for undergraduate classes on American economic history and multiple offerings in legal history and early American history, in addition to Penn’s broader U.S. history survey. Prior to graduate school, Jenny was a practicing lawyer in New York and London, including as an International Human Rights Clinic supervisor and associate at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law. Her experience in transnational and human rights law as well as disability history has made her particularly passionate about creating classroom spaces which emphasize belonging and amicable engagement with the diversity of lived experiences. A Penn undergraduate alumna (B.A. in History and Political Science), Jenny is also a strong advocate for humanities education within the University.

 

Maxine Calle
Mathematics
Maxine Calle

Mathematics

Maxine is a fourth-year PhD candidate, 2023 Dean's Scholar, and 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the mathematics department. Her research focuses on algebraic topology and homotopy theory. Hailing from a small beach town in San Diego, CA, she received a BA in mathematics from Reed College in Portland, OR, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. In the mathematics department at Penn, she co-organizes the Directed Reading Program, which pairs graduate students with undergraduates for independent studies, as well as GeMs in Math, the graduate and faculty group supporting gender minorities in mathematics. She has translated her passion for mathematical communication and outreach through her work as a 2023 AAAS Mass Media Fellow, a 2021 and 2022 fellow for the Netter Center's Penn Graduate Community-Engaged Research Mentorship program, and a volunteer instructor with Princeton's Prison Teaching Initiative.

Ornella Darova
Economics
Ornella Darova

Economics

Ornella is a fifth year PhD student in Economics. Her research focuses on education and demographic diversity. Her dissertation investigates bilingual and cultural-friendly programs for indigenous students in Mexico; furthermore, she has run several experiments concerning the impact of demographic diversity on group learning and teamwork. Before starting her PhD, she has worked as a consultant for the World Bank in the Balkans on a project training young entrepreneurs from the region and as a field coordinator for Bocconi University in Sierra Leone on a project on harmful social norms and girls' education.

Tiffany Nguyen
Classical Studies
Tiffany Nguyen

Classical Studies

Tiffany is a fourth year PhD candidate in the Classical Studies department. Her research focuses on crucial moments of decision making in the works of Seneca the Younger. At Penn, she has taught multiple Latin courses and TA’d for Greek and Roman Mythology. Additionally, as a part of the Classics department’s Anti-Racism Working group, she was part of a committee to put on a year long workshop series, “First Fridays,” on topics of anti-racist theory, pedagogy, and the impact of white supremacy.

Nat Rivkin
English
Nat Rivkin

English

Nat is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in English at Penn. Their research interests include premodern poetry, trans studies, and the history of sexuality. They are working on a dissertation that examines gender, race, and classical reception history in late medieval and early modern England. For the AY 2022–24, they are a Graduate Associate for the Trans Oral History Project run by the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies. Nat received a BA in English and Gender & Women's Studies from Pomona College.

Previous Graduate Fellows for Teaching Excellence

Stacey Bevan
Nursing

Thomas Brazelton
Mathematics

Deion Dresser
Italian Studies

Elizabeth Dunens
Higher Education

Jesse Hanlan
Physics & Astronomy

Paul He
Computer & Information Science

Bryce Heatherly
East Asian Languages & Civilizations

Tessa Huttenlocher
Sociology

Tyler Leigh
Communication

Chloe Ricks
Political Science

Jeremy Rubin
Biostatistics

Michael Shea
Comparative Literature

Jessica Weakly
Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics

Alexandra Zborovsky
History

Ada Aka
Psychology

Natalia Enid Aponte Borges
Earth & Environmental Science

Lauren Bridges
Communication

Alexis Crockett
Neuroscience

Abigail Dym
Political Science

Taylor Dysart
History & Sociology of Science

Marisa Egan
Cell and Molecular Biology

Sheng Gao
Statistics

Tony Liu
Computer and Information Science

Mercedes Mayna-Medrano
Hispanic Studies

Jane Robbins Mize
English

Paradorn (Joe) Rummaneethorn
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Kimberly White
History

Angela Xia
Religious Studies

Matt DeCross
Physics and Astronomy

Mohammad Fereydounian
Electrical and Systems Engineering

Shivajee Govind
Chemistry

Lauren Harris
Sociology

Antoine Haywood
Communication

Davy Knittle
English

Kristina Lewis
Education

Zachary Loeb
History and Sociology of Science

Theodora Naqvi
Classical Studies

Bruno Saconi
Nursing

Adam Sax
Comparative Literature & Literary Theory

Zachary Smith
Political Science

Daniel Wilde
Management

Tamir Williams
History of Art

Sonia Bansal
Bioengineering

Emilie Benson
Physics

Irteza Binte-Farid
Education

Alexandra Brown
Romance Languages

Rui Castro
Architecture

Joseph Cooke
Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics

McFeely Jackson Goodman
Mathematics

Erynn Johnson
Earth & Environmental Science

Karren Knowlton
Management

Erica Lawrence
Biology

Alexis Rider
History & Sociology of Science

Anna Leigh Todd
History

Rachel Wise
History of Art

Naomi Zucker
Anthropology

Cameron Anglum
Education

Phoebe Askelson
Chemistry

Elizabeth Bynum
Music

Ava Creemers
Linguistics

Dana Cypress
English

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Comparative Literature

Maryam Khojasteh
City and Regional Planning

Alex Miller
Operations, Information and Decisions

Samantha Oliver
Communication

Ryan Pilipow
Ancient History

Katerina Placek
Neuroscience

Brian Reese
Philosophy

Didem Uca
German

Shantee Rosado
Senior Graduate Fellow

Diego Arispe-Bazán
Anthropology

Chelsea Chamberlain
History

Welton Chang
Psychology

Danielle Hanley
Political Science

Kathryn Hasz
Mechanical Enginering & Applied Mechanics

Elaine LaFay
History & Sociology of Science

Mark Lewis
Education

Santiago Paternain
Electrical & Systems Engineering

Steven Renette
Art & Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Maria Ryan
Music

Hao Jun (Howie) Tam
English

Noa Hegesh
East Asian Languages & Civilizations

Joseph Hoisington
Mathematics

Najnin Islam
English

Erika Kontulainen
German

Theo Lim
City & Regional Planning

Elena Maris
Communication

Paul Mitchell
Anthropology

Stan Najmr
Chemistry

Trishala Parthasarathi
Neuroscience

Rebecca Rivard
Cancer Biology, Perelman School of Medicine

Shantee Rosado
Sociology

Jane Sancinito
Ancient History

SaraEllen Strongman
Africana Studies

Helen Teng
Nursing

Osman Balkan
Political Science

Katie Clonan-Roy
Education

Mitra Eghbal
Biology

Naomi Fitter
Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics

Alison Howard
Comparative Literature

Jin Woo Jang
Mathematics

Dianne Mitchell
English

Jake Morton
Ancient History

Raha Rafii
Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations

Kyle Smith
Chemistry

Tim Sowicz
Nursing

Kelsey Speer
Cell & Molecular Biology, Perelman School of Medicine

Kristian Taketomo
History

Bronwyn Wallace
Senior Graduate Fellow

Justin Bernstein
Philosophy

Ben Chrisinger
City & Regional Planning

Peter Sachs Collopy
History and Sociology of Science

Lili Dworkin
Computer and Information Science

Ian M. Hartshorn
Political Science

Alice Hu
Classical Studies

Jacob Nagy
Chemistry

Emmabeth Parrish
Materials Science and Engineering

Tanya Singh
Biology

Colin Smith
Neuroscience

Phillip Webster
Religious Studies

Vanessa Williams
Music

Richard Eisenberg
Computer and Information Science

Lindsey Fiorelli
Philosophy

Jay Lucci
Classical Studies

Rose Muravchick
Religious Studies

Sal Nicolazzo
Comparative Literature

Rebecca Pierce
Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics

Irene Sibbing Plantholt
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Bridget Swanson
German

Bronwyn Wallace
English

Tanya Weerakkody
Neuroscience

Eric Bellin
Architecture

Derek Blackwell
Communication

Carolyn Chernoff
Education and Sociology

Wiebke Deimling
Philosophy

Emily Gerstell
English

Bryan Jones 

Romance Languages

JR Keller 

Management 


Matthew Kruer 

History 


Peter-Michael Osera
Computer and Information Science

Olivia Padovan-Merhar
Physics

Will Schmenner
History of Art

Max Topaz
Nursing

Madeleine Wilcox
East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Ursula Williams
Chemistry

Megan Potteiger
Senior Graduate Fellow

Claire Bourne
English

Rosella Cappella
Political Science

Meghan Crnic
History & Sociology of Science

Daniel DiMassa
German

Jen Gerrish 

Classical Studies

Rachel Guberman 

History 


Beth Hallowell 

Anthropology 


Grace Lavery
Comparative Literature

Tara Liss-Marino
Communication

Emil Pitkin
Statistics

Melanie Adley
German

Adam Aviv
Computer & Information Science

Carolyn Brunelle
Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations

Andrew Crocco
Communication

Britt Dahlberg
Anthropology

Glenn Holtzman
Music

Catherine Kopil
Neuroscience

Shimul Melwani
Management

Megan Potteiger
Chemistry

Miranda Routh
History of Art

Charles Thomas
Physics

Bryan Cameron
Romance Languages

Barbara Elias
Political Science

Rosemary Frasso
Social Policy & Practice

Jessica Lautin
History

Nathaniel Prottas
History of Art

Amanda Reiterman
Art & Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Nicole Ruedy
Operations & Information Management

Paul White
Mechanical Engineering

Megan Phifer-Rixey
Senior Graduate Fellow

Drew Hilton
Computer and Information Science

Greta LaFleur
English

Peter Mondelli
Music

Roberto Salguero-Gomez
Biology

Clayton Shonkwiler
Math

Nicole Myers Turner
History

Noah Drezner
Education

Daniela Fera
Chemistry

Sarah Manekin
History

Megan Phifer-Rixey
Biology

Angelina Stelmach
Romance Languages

Brandon Woods
English

Kate Baldanza
East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Andrew Knight
Management

Sarah Manekin
History

Melody Mark
Ancient History

Jennifer Pastore
Biology

Deniz Selman
Economics