2023 Celebration of Teaching and Learning Symposium

Featured Panelists

Meet Our Event Panelists

Celebrating Teaching Transformations at Columbia: A Faculty Panel

Maura Abbott

Associate Professor of Nursing; Assistant Dean of Clinical Affairs

Maura Abott is the Assistant Dean of Clinical Affairs, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Coordinator of the Oncology Subspeciality at Columbia University’s School of Nursing, where she teaches courses for the Oncology Subspecialty in the Masters Direct Entry (MDE) Nursing program. During the remote teaching shift in Spring 2020, Dr. Abbott engaged students in real-time learning, embraced flipped and hybrid classroom models, and aligned her teaching with emergent clinical practice. 

Thomas Groll

Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of International and Public Affairs

Thomas Groll is a senior lecturer in the Discipline of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he teaches core courses for Macroeconomics. During the remote teaching shift in Spring 2020, Dr. Groll streamlined his course content to support student learning, experimented with new approaches to teaching, and provided students with multiple ways to engage.

Devon Rupley

Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, CUIMC

Devon Rupley is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and Director of Residency Ob/Gyn Education at The Allen Hospital. At CUIMC, she serves as a core teaching faculty member in the OB/GYN department, whose daily teaching routine includes precepting second- and third-year medical students during their time on the labor and delivery unit, where they learn first-hand about pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum care. During the remote teaching shift in Spring 2020, Dr. Rupley innovated course assignments to support student learning and embraced reciprocity in learning. 

Katja Vogt

Professor of Philosophy

Katja Vogt is a Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University’s Department of Philosophy. Dr. Vogt is a specialist in ancient philosophy, ethics, and normative epistemology, and a recipient of the Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. During the remote teaching shift in Spring 2020, Dr. Vogt flipped her course, partnered with TAs and alumni to support student learning, and invited guest lecturers to encourage student connection with course materials.

Faculty Innovations through Provost’s Teaching and Learning Grants: A Panel Conversation

Jean-Marie Alves-Bradford

Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Dean for Medical School Professionalism in the Learning Environment, VP&S

Dr. Jean-Marie Alves-Bradford, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, the inaugural Dean for Medical School Professionalism in the Learning Environment at VP&S and the Director of the Washington Heights Community Service (WHCS) at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). Dr. Alves-Bradford also serves as the training director for the Columbia University’s NIMH funded T32 Research Fellowship in Global Mental Health. She sees patients, teaches medical students, residents and fellows and manages inpatient and outpatient psychiatric services in upper Manhattan. She has been a Columbia faculty member since completing her residency in Psychiatry at Columbia University where she served as chief resident. Dr. Alves-Bradford’s professional interests include medical education, faculty development, improving care for individuals with serious mental illness in underserved communities in the US and abroad, and advancing equity, diversity and inclusion and belonging.

Ari Goldman

Professor of Journalism

Ari L. Goldman has taught at the journalism school since 1993. He is the director of the school’s Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism and the Spiritual Life. In addition to the religion seminar, Professor Goldman also teaches Reporting, the Master’s Project and the course “The Journalism of Death & Dying,” which looks at everything from writing obituaries to covering natural disasters and suicide. Before coming to Columbia, Goldman spent 20 years at The New York Times, most of it as a religion writer. In addition, he covered New York State politics, transportation and education. He was educated at Yeshiva University, Harvard and Columbia. Goldman was a Visiting Fulbright Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem; a Skirball Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in England, and a scholar-in-residence for a semester at Yeshiva’s Stern College for Women.

Gregory Khalil

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Journalism

Gregory Khalil is the co-founder and President of Telos, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit that equips American leaders and their communities to better engage seemingly intractable conflict. Much of Telos’ work has centered on the role of faith leaders and culture shapers in America’s relationship to Israel/Palestine and the broader Middle East. Prior to founding Telos, Greg was a legal and communications adviser to Palestinian leaders on peace negotiations with Israel. Greg is also a founding member and chair of the board of directors of Narrative 4, a global non-profit that seeks to use story and media to cultivate empathy across divides. He has lectured internationally and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Review of Faith & International Affairs. 

Drew Youngren

Lecturer in the Discipline of Applied Mathematics

Drew Youngren focuses chiefly on undergraduate mathematics education. For more than 10 years, he has taught a range of courses from general interest statistics through non-Euclidean geometry for mathematics majors. Youngren is interested in the role of technology, and more specifically computation, in the learning of mathematics. He has participated in grant work to introduce computational work in discrete mathematics and on a larger scale in linear algebra. At Columbia, he is developing the multivariable calculus curriculum tailored to the needs of engineers and applied scientists, where he hopes similarly to infuse technological elements into a classical curriculum. He has received an Outstanding Teacher Award from the University of Chicago, a RET (Research Experiences for Teachers) Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, and a Newton Fellowship from Math for America.

Branching Out: Enhancing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning through Learning Analytics and Applied Learning Sciences 

Samantha Garbers

Associate Professor, Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health

Using her training as an epidemiologist, Dr. Garbers works with a diverse range of clinical- and community-based stakeholders to develop, adapt, implement, and evaluate innovative interventions to improve public health for diverse populations. In addition to serving as Curriculum Director for the Department, she conducts evaluations and applied research to improve student engagement in public health courses, leveraging secondary data and primary data to drive evidence-based insights to improve learning. She has taught in the Mailman Core since 2015 as well as numerous departmental methods courses. She collaborated extensively with the Office of Educational Initiatives team to evaluate the process and outcomes of the Core, publishing their findings in 2021. Reflecting her commitment to innovating in the Core, she received the Core Excellence Award (2018) and the Innovation in Teaching Award (2021).

Roxanne Russell

Director of Online Education, Mailman School of Public Health

Dr. Russell has over 20 years of university-level teaching experience and over 15 years of professional experience with designing, developing, integrating and evaluating online learning environments in higher education. Before coming to Mailman, Dr. Russell helped launch the first fully online doctoral program at Emory University and worked with University of Virginia’s Course Design Institute to create an award-winning faculty development forum and course mapping tool. She serves as a mentor for the Center for Disease Control’s E-Learning Institute, working with public health practitioners to design and develop courses. Dr. Russell has presented and published in the areas of digital learning and learning analytics in public, private, and non‐profit sectors in the US, India and China and was issued a patent for a machine learning reading comprehension tool.

Tugce Bilgin Sonay

Lecturer, Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology & Columbia Science Fellow

Dr. Bilgin Sonay received her Ph.D. in Computational Evolutionary Biology in 2014. Following her passion in teaching, she joined the Frontiers of Science Fellows program in Columbia University in 2019, serving as a seminar instructor for the College’s Core science course. Dr. Bilgin Sonay is affiliated with an NSF-funded outreach program at CUNY Brooklyn College and teaches creative coding at Pratt Art and Design Institute. She is interested in inclusive scientific teaching approaches and received the CTL’s Diversity Matters award last year. Fascinated by the duality of the mental and the physical, Dr. Bilgin Sonay is also a yoga instructor.

Joshua Friedman

Ph.D. Candidate, Cognitive Science and Education, Teachers College

After living, teaching, and traveling around five continents to learn how the world learns (formally and informally), Joshua entered the world of research and academia in 2018 as a doctoral student in the Cognitive Science in Education program offered jointly by GSAS and TC. He also works as a research assistant in Ray Lee’s lab at the Zuckerman Institute studying brain-to-brain interactions. In his dissertation work, he explores social and emotional forces in learning and the ways that individual peer-to-peer, teacher-to-student, and self-to-self interactions shape and are shaped by educational and societal systems.

Taking the Lead: Developing Agency as a Graduate Student Instructor

Tylar Colleluori

Ph.D. Candidate, Italian and Comparative Literature

Tylar Colleluori is a 7th year Ph.D. candidate in Italian and Comparative Literature. Her dissertation research is devoted to an exploration of the political and historiographical motivations behind Moderata Fonte’s chivalric epic poem I tredici canti del Floridoro (1581). Tylar is completing the advanced track of the Teaching Development Program, and has worked with the CTL as both a Senior Teaching Observation Fellow and a Teaching Consultant.

Simone Paci

Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science

Simone Paci is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. His primary research area is the political economy of taxation, with a focus on tax evasion and redistribution. His teaching interests cover comparative politics, European studies, and research methodology. At Columbia, he received the GSAS Teaching Scholar Fellowship and the Teaching Observation Fellowship.

Sara Jane Samuel

Ph.D. Candidate, Sociomedical Sciences

Sara Jane Samuel is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociomedical Sciences department. An interdisciplinary scholar, she has experience teaching history, ethics, public health, and social theory. Sara is currently serving as a Senior Teaching Observation Fellow at the CTL and loves to learn from her students just as much as she enjoys teaching them.