CETLI'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
Mengliu Cheng
History
Mengliu Cheng (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Department of History. Her interests include modern China, science and technology, environment, and popular culture. She is working on a dissertation about how people invented and made machines in everyday life, especially machines related to farming. She has taught a range of courses in world history and Asian history, and is interested in the use of digital humanities in research and teaching. Prior to joining Penn, she participated in an NGO initiative that aimed to support students from working-class families in urban China, focusing on how socio-cultural factors influenced students’ motivations and decision-makings.
Max Cohen
Physics & Astronomy
Max Cohen (he/him) is a third year PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN, his research focuses on applications of modern machine learning techniques in elementary particle physics. In addition to research, teaching has always been a passion for Max. Whether TAing for introductory physics labs, tutoring veterans through the Veterans Upward Bound program, or running events and hackathons for A3D3, he loves working hands-on with students, helping them explore new ideas, develop problem solving skills, and build confidence in the classroom.
A.J. Geers
Electrical & Systems Engineering
A.J. Geers (he/him) is a PhD student in the Electrical and Systems Engineering department. His research focuses on integrated photonic-electronic circuit design for various applications including machine learning. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Penn. A.J. has been a teaching assistant for six different courses. His favorite course to TA is an introductory circuits course because it gives him the opportunity to help students engage with the abstract theory through hands-on experiments in the lab.
Anastasia Gracheva
Management
Anastasia Gracheva (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Management at Wharton, with a specialization in strategy. Her research looks at organizational resilience, namely how firms prepare for, adapt to, and learn from crises events. In addition to TAing management classes at the undergraduate and MBA levels, she is committed to many mentorship initiatives, both at Wharton and beyond.
Aria Zheyuan Huang
Bioengineering
Aria Zheyuan Huang (she/her) is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Bioengineering. Her research in the Hughes lab focuses on developmental biology, tissue engineering, and mechanobiology, with an emphasis on early kidney development. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Arizona State University and a master’s degree in Bioengineering from Penn. Since 2021, she has been actively involved in the Engineering Ethics Initiative to lead in-class discussions and facilitate curriculum development. She has developed ethics modules based on technical teaching across the 4-year undergraduate curriculum in Bioengineering.
Emma Kocik
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Emma Kocik (she/her) is a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Her research in the Penn BiCycles Lab explores how glaciers and ice sheets influence the cycles of biologically important trace elements, with fieldwork taking her to remote regions such as Chilean Patagonia and Greenland. She holds a bachelor’s of science in Chemistry from Chapman University. Emma is passionate about science education and mentorship, which she has explored through her TA experience with largely non-major introductory earth science courses. She strives to keep the earth sciences accessible and relevant, emphasizing the importance for all global citizens to understand and protect the planet.
Anna Linetskaya
Comparative Literature & Literary Theory
Anna Linetskaya (she/her) is a third-year doctoral student in the Comparative Literature and Literary Theory program. Her current research focuses on the early 20th-century Russian Futurism movement and its relation to the post-1917 reframing of ideas of space and language. Alongside her scholarly pursuits, Anna is committed to her service as an educator. Prior to Penn, she designed and taught a number of college-level courses as an adjunct professor of literature at the City College of New York. At Penn, she has continued to expand her pedagogical scope by TAing in the History and Russian and Eastern European Studies departments, and is scheduled to teach Russian as a foreign language during the upcoming year. No matter the discipline, a student-centered approach is at the heart of her teaching philosophy.
Sumaya Malas
Political Science
Lance Murphy
Immunology
Lance Murphy (he/him) is a sixth-year MD-PhD student studying immunology. He graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor’s of science in Bioengineering. His current research focuses on the role of the immune system in osteoarthritis, specifically pathology of the bone. In addition to research, Lance has an extensive history with mentorship and teaching. He has mentored undergraduate students, graduate students, and research technicians. In the 2024-2025 academic year, Lance received the Penn Prize for Graduate Student Teaching.
Rehana Thembeka Odendaal
Education, Culture & Society, and Sociology
Rehana Thembeka Odendaal (she/her) is a joint PhD Candidate in the Education, Culture & Society (GSE) and sociology (SAS) departments. Born and raised in South Africa, Rehana’s commitment to multicultural learning earned her the Fulbright scholarship that brought her to Penn. In the classroom, she has experience TAing undergraduate history and sociology courses, as well as qualitative research methods at the graduate level. Her academic research focuses on civics and political education, and is informed by her experience as an educator and facilitator for high school and college-aged young people across various extra-curricular programs. These experiences include Penn’s Social Justice Research Academy and the University of Stellenbosch’s JustLead! program. In the 2025-2026 academic year, Rehana is also one of three graduate fellows at the Andrea Mitchell Centre for Democracy. As a CETLI fellow she is looking forward to learning more about utiziling different learning technologies to facilitate deeper engagement with discussion and course materials.
Sandrine Rajaonarivony
French & Francophone Studies
Sandrine Rajaonarivony (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD candidate in French and Francophone Studies, also preparing a Certificate in Africana Studies. She holds a Bachelor in French and English Language and Literature, as well as a master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Nantes University (France). She has taught various levels of French language courses at Penn, including the Advanced French in Residence course (for which she served as the Director from 2022 to 2024 at Gregory College House). Sandrine has taught in various countries, including France, the UK and Czech Republic (where she did a one-year exchange program). Prior to Penn, she worked as a teacher at a secondary school in France and served as a Teaching Assistant at Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, Pennsylvania). In 2024, she was the recipient of the Francophone, Italian and Germanic Department’s Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Teaching. She conducts research on Francophone authors and artists from the diaspora, Madagascar and postcolonialism in France.
Taylor Smith
Communication
Rhea Swain
History of Art
Rhea Swain is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of the History of Art at Penn. Her research currently focuses on early American and British imperial visual and material cultures, with an emphasis on transatlantic representations of colonial commodity histories, race, and labor in the nineteenth century. She holds a bachelor’s in Art History and Political Science from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where her teaching experience first took shape through her design and facilitation of an “Exploring Art History” course as part of the First-Year Interest Group Seminars (FIGS) Program. At Penn, she has earned the CETLI Teaching Certificate, trained at CETLI in the Teaching that Enables Every Student to Thrive mini-course, and served a teaching assistant for 2000-level History of Art courses such as American Art (1750-2000), Contemporary Art, Impressionism in a Global Context, and Modern Architecture. She has also acted as a graduate curator as part of the Penn/Bryn Mawr Incubation Series, and held internships at arts institutions like Pundole’s Auction House and the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation in Mumbai through the Penn South Asian Center, and the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington D.C.
Amanda Watson
Nursing
Amanda Watson (she/her) is a third year PhD student in the School of Nursing. She graduated from Penn Nursing in 2022 with her BSN and is additionally a licensed RN. She has clinical experience caring for cardiac post-surgical patients at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores nursing as a social phenomenon and the concepts of nurse identity and nurse-led care. Through this research she hopes to amplifiy the voices of nurses who are lesser represented in the nursing literature, including a wide array of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, and ability identities. Ensuring that nursing theories and models of nursing practice are generated by a diverse set of nurses will help move the discipline forward. She has served in various teaching roles, beginning her sophomore year of undergraduate as an anatomy lab TA. Her recent experience as a teaching fellow for the Nursing 101 course further sparked her interest in teaching and creating engaging assignments that help introduce first year nursing students to the profession.
Previous Graduate Fellows for Teaching Excellence
Cami Berlin
Chemistry
Tess Bernhard
Education
Krishan Canzius
Mathematics
Julia Cope
Communication
Jonathan Dick
English
VanJessica Gladney
History
Shafagh Keyvanian Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics
Henrique Laurino Dos Santos
Marketing
Ellen Munsterman
Nursing
Tiffany Nguyen
Classical Studies
Qiran Shang
Architecture
Jessica Shi
Computer & Information Science
Rebecca Winkler
Anthropology
Oscar Qiu Jun Zheng
East Asian Languages & Civilizations
Addison Buxton-Martin
Biology
Gregory Campbell
Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics
Lourdes Contreras
Italian Studies
Jaydee Edwards
Earth & Environmental Sciences
Ari Gzesh
Social Policy & Practice
Liz Hallgren
Communication
Kyndall Nicholas
Neuroscience
Aoife O’Farrell
Bioengineering
Artemis Panagopoulou
Computer & Information Science
Cerulean S. Payne-Passmore
Music
Miranda Sklaroff
Political Science
Jeremy Steinberg
Religious Studies
Marcus Tomaino
Economics
Taylor Tomlinson
Chemistry
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
Resources
- Overview
- Supporting Your Students
- Teaching that Enables Every Student to Thrive
- Teaching with Technology
- Generative AI & Your Teaching
- Structured Active In-class Learning (SAIL)
- Syllabus Language & Policies
- Academic Integrity
- Course Evaluations
- Teaching Online
- Course Roster, Classroom & Calendar Info
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