CTL Graduate Fellows

Stacey is a third year PhD student at the School of Nursing and MS candidate in Statistics at Wharton. Her dissertation seeks to understand mechanisms that underpin mental health disparities in Hispanic children. Stacey broadly works at the intersection of disability, immigration, and inequality with implications for child health providers. As a teaching assistant or guest lecturer Stacey has supported many courses at Penn Nursing, spanning topics from global health to pediatric psychiatry to nursing ethics. As a teacher, Stacey is excited by community and civic engagement, active learning, reflective practice, and accessibility. She is especially interested in strategies to integrate simulation and didactic learning into clinical settings that promote health equity. Prior to her doctoral studies and clinical training at Penn, she completed a dual degree in International Relations and Biology at Tufts University. Stacey’s scholarship is supported through the Hillman Scholars of Nursing Innovation, the Institute of Education Sciences and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

Thomas is a fifth-year PhD candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the mathematics department. His research focuses on the interplay between enumerative geometry and homotopy theory. He received a joint BA/MA in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University prior to coming to Penn. He was named a “Master TA” in the mathematics department, and has been an instructor for Princeton Prison Teaching Initiative, as well as Penn Summer Prep where he designed and taught a course on voting theory. In the mathematics department he is a co-founder and co-organizer for the Directed Reading Program, which pairs undergraduates with graduate students for independent studies. He was named a 2021 Dean’s Scholar, and has previously worked for CTL and the School of Arts & Sciences as part of the inaugural 2021-2022 cohort of Graduate Fellows for Equitable and Inclusive Teaching.

Deion is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Italian Studies. His research focusses on the intersections of the intellectual histories of Italian feminism and political philosophy. Deion has taught beginner and intermediate Italian classes and his teaching interests include second-language pedagogy, inclusion of diversity, equity, and inclusion into the syllabus, and recentering the language classroom around the student. Deion grew up in Sydney, Australia and received a BA in Italian and Classics from Georgetown University.

Elizabeth Dunens (she/her) is a 4^th year PhD Candidate in the Higher Education Division of PennGSE. Her current research focuses on shared governance and postsecondary leadership in challenging organizational environments. She has served as a TA and summer instructor for the PennGSE courses "Case Studies in Higher Education" and "Faculty and Academic Governance". Prior to joining Penn, Elizabeth worked with faculty, students, and nonprofits to facilitate community-based research and experiential learning as Associate Director of Service-Learning at St. Catherine University. While at St. Kate's and as a grad student at the University of Minnesota, she also had the opportunity to teach eight semesters of first-year undergraduate courses focused on the liberal arts, social justice, and student development. Elizabeth is particularly interested in pedagogical practices that foster community-building, student engagement, and democratic dialogue, in the classroom and beyond.

Jesse is a PhD candidate in the Physics and Astronomy department. His research focuses on how granular materials, like sand, cars, or people, can suddenly clog as they flow through an outlet. He has assisted teaching much of the introductory and laboratory physics curriculum at Penn, and is an instructor with the Penn Experimental Physics Research Academy during the summers. His interest is in making physics accessible and connected to our everyday lives. A big part of making physics accessible is to make it inclusive, which Jesse has facilitated through his position as co-president of the physics department outreach group and mentoring local high schoolers in physics. 

Paul is a fifth year PhD candidate in the Department of Computer and Information Science. His research in the field of programming languages aims to help software developers write more reliable software. His projects often involve computer-verified proofs to formally specify and verify properties of computer programs. Before starting his PhD, Paul completed his Bachelor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. At Penn, he has been a TA and instructor for several courses in the CIS department, including a class on C++ programming which he designed. He is especially interested in how mathematical thinking is taught in computer science curricula and using active learning approaches in the classroom.

Bryce is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. He works broadly on the art and material culture of China, and his dissertation focuses on the practice of burying objects inside Buddhist relic pagodas in southeast China during the tenth and eleventh centuries. At Penn, Bryce has served as a TA for the undergraduate courses Introduction to Chinese Civilization, Introduction to Japanese Civilization, Arts of China, and East Asian Art and Civilization. In this capacity, he has led numerous object-based recitation sections centered on the collection of the Penn Museum. As a CTL fellow, Bryce is excited to continue conversations with his peers about active and inclusive learning.

Tessa is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, where she studies religious groups’ investments in the field of higher education in the early 20th century. Her research interests include organizational decision-making, social stratification, and qualitative research methods. Tessa earned her B.A. in Sociology from UChicago and worked in affordable housing before moving to Philadelphia in 2016. She has experience teaching courses including Introduction to Sociology, Methods of Sociological Research, and Sociology of Media and Popular Culture. She is passionate about making the tools of sociology accessible to students.

Tyler is in his fifth year of a joint-PhD in political science and communication. His research considers the role of media in democracies, with a particular focus on how new and developing media change the ways in which people talk about and make sense of politics. At Penn, Tyler has served as a TA for undergraduate political science classes like Public Opinion and American Democracy and Statistical Methods for Political Science. He also teaches a summer course through Penn Summer Prep called Fantastic Politics, where he uses popular sci-fi/fantasy worlds like Star Wars and Harry Potter to help students understand contemporary political issues. Prior to Penn, Tyler earned an MA in Education Policy through Erasmus+ and undergraduate degrees from the University of Georgia in International Relations and African Political Development. He first fell in love with teaching as a swim lesson instructor for toddlers and has over a decade of teaching experience across various contexts.

Chloe is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Political Science Department. Her research examines religious, racial, and electoral politics in the U.S. and Brazil. She holds a B.A. in International Comparative Studies (ICS) from Duke University, where she graduated with Highest Distinction after her senior honors thesis “‘Last Stop Destination’: Poverty, Anti-blackness, and University Education in the Mississippi Delta and Brazil’s Baixada Fluminense” co-received the ICS 2018 Distinguished Thesis Award. While at Penn, she has served as a TA for four political science courses: Intro to American Politics, Intro to Comparative Politics, International Politics of the Middle East, and Race and Ethnic Politics. As a CTL fellow and lover of knowledge, she aims to both facilitate and learn from classroom settings where students and instructors exchange ideas with one another.

Jeremy Rubin is a third-year Penn Biostatistics PhD student in the Perelman School of Medicine. He received a M.S in Biostatistics from the Perelman School of Medicine, and a B.S. in Statistics and Mathematics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Jeremy's current research focuses on predicting clinical outcomes from kidney biopsy images.  He developed his passion for supporting students in higher education through serving as a teaching assistant (TA) at UMBC for over three years across five courses. At Penn, Jeremy has also had the opportunity to work with graduate students through being a TA for HPR 604: Introduction to Statistics for Health Policy, as well as BIOM 610: Data Analysis for Life Science. In 2022, he received the CTL Teaching Certificate. Jeremy is ecstatic about the opportunity to continue developing his teaching abilities, and ultimately support diverse post-secondary students in introductory mathematics and statistics courses.

Michael Martin Shea is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, where he studies US and Latin American poetry, politics, and cultural production. His dissertation project focuses on poetic representations of visionary and mystical practices from the 1970s to the 1990s as part of a hemispheric response to the neoliberal turn. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi and a BA in English and Philosophy from Florida State University. Before coming to Penn, he taught classes at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the University of Mississippi, and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina), where he served as a Fulbright Fellow. At Penn, he has been a TA for English and Romance Language courses, and has led both literature and foreign language classes. He has also co-directed the Poetry and Poetics Working Group and the Intensive Reading Group.

Jessica is a 5th year PhD candidate in the MEAM department advised by Dr. Cynthia Sung. Her research is focused on passively morphing aerial robots, and she has enjoyed mentoring many undergrad researchers. Jessica received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, along with a minor in Technology Entrepreneurship. During her undergrad she got to run office hours and assist with labs for an introductory programming course for mechanical engineers, where she enjoyed facilitating hand-on learning. At Penn, Jessica has been a TA for MEAM520 for two semesters and MEAM211 for one semester. In addition, as a CTL TA trainer for both the 2021 and 2022 cohorts, she has designed and led workshops on Leading Problem Solving Recitations that emphasize active learning techniques. Jessica is excited to continue to develop her teaching through discussions and seminars this year.

Alexandra (Sasha) Zborovsky is a third-year PhD student in the University of Pennsylvania’s history department.  She graduated from the Ohio State University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Art in History and English Literature.  Currently, her doctoral research examines the diaspora of almost two million Jews from the former Soviet Union in the second half of the twentieth century.  She investigates Soviet Jews’ desire to depart and the circumstances—ranging from the Cold War to Soviet antisemitism—fueling that aspiration.  Her project also connects this movement of peoples to over one century of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe and to the formation of modern migration policy.  Sasha has also served as a teaching assistant for the ever-popular “Cold War: A Global History” course and a grader for the “Napoleonic Era and Tolstoy” seminar.  Outside the university, Sasha has been published in The Washington Post and interned both at the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  As a Center for Teaching and Learning fellow, Sasha hopes to further hone her teaching skills.  First drawn to academia in hopes of teaching students at a university level, she encourages classroom settings that foster collaboration, critical thinking, and infectious enthusiasm.