Current LIT Fellow Profiles
Leadership in Inclusive Teaching Fellows
We are pleased to introduce the 2022–2023 Leadership in Inclusive Teaching Fellows.
LIT Fellows initiate a project during each academic year to support inclusive teaching and equitable outcomes for all students, as outlined in the IDEAL initiative.
Melissa Lee and Aditya Narayan (School of Medicine)
Kayla Good (Department of Psychology)
Sydney Jordan, Bendix Kemmann, and Caitlin Brust (Department of Philosophy)
Lloyd May (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics)
Rachel Dubit, Sarah Wilker, and Micheal Duchesne (Department of Classics)
Callan Monette, Will Yu, and Andrew Perley (Department of Bioengineering)
Candice Kim and Cheyenne Payne (Department of Biology)
Gabi Gavrila (Graduate School of Education)
Julia Markel (Computer Science)
Michelle Ha (Modern Thought and Literature)
Sonia Martin and Ahmed Elnahhas (Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Sebastian Arana, Iris Mollhoff, Taylar Hammond, Ev Nichols, and Billie Goolsby (Department of Biology)
Aditya Narayan | School of Medicine
Aditya (he/him) is a second-year medical student conducting research on personalized learning plans. In light of trends in medical education including increased pass/fail grading he hopes that his work will help lay the groundwork for more equitable evaluation mechanisms. His work is informed by his prior teaching experience in K-12, higher education, and medical education spaces.
As a LIT fellow, Aditya will be working with Melissa Lee to design and implement a curriculum for medical and physician assistant students that centers around improving belonging, increasing providers' capacity for allyship, and creating safer spaces for patient care.
Melissa Lee | School of Medicine
Melissa (she/her) is a second-year medical student who is conducting research on medical education and its role in developing healthcare practitioners who are committed to equity. Prior to medical school, she worked as a middle school teacher in the Bronx where she taught special education math, and developed a passion for exploring strategies for promoting inclusive teaching.
As a LIT fellow, Melissa will be working with Aditya to design and implement a curriculum for medical and physician assistant students that centers around improving belonging, increasing provider’s capacity for allyship, and creating safer spaces for patient care.
Kayla Good | Department of Psychology
Kayla Good (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD student in the Developmental area of the Psychology Department. Her research focuses on metatheories, or perceptions of others’ growth and fixed mindsets. In particular, she is interested in how we form these metatheories and how they interact with our own mindsets to shape our goals and behavior in educational contexts. Kayla’s interests were inspired by her experience teaching STEM subjects across a variety of age groups (from elementary schoolers to college students). Through these experiences, she learned just how critical inclusive teaching approaches are for ensuring that students benefit equally from opportunities to learn and engage in the classroom.
As a continuing LIT fellow, she is excited to expand the Psychology department’s inclusive teaching trainings for new TAs.
Candice Kim | School of Medicine & Graduate School of Education
Candice Kim, MS (they/them) is a 7th-year MD/PhD in Education student. Their research focuses on how to improve training of future healthcare providers to care for patients from marginalized communities. Previously, they earned their BS and MS in biology from Stanford and conducted research in cancer biology and regenerative medicine. They have extensive experience developing curricula for myriad target populations, including K12, community college, undergraduate, graduate/professional students, and faculty. Last year, they worked with LIT fellow Cheyenne Payne to launch the STEM Mentor Network, a series of workshops to support inclusive mentoring practices for STEM graduate students and postdocs working with undergraduate research mentees.
They are collaborating with LIT fellow Cheyenne Payne to expand the STEM Mentor Network this year. They believe inclusive teaching and mentoring is essential to ensure that Stanford is an empowering learning community for each and every student. In addition to being a LIT fellow, they are also co-teaching for the School of Education’s undergraduate honors program.
Cheyenne Payne | Department of Biology
Cheyenne Payne (she/her) is a fifth year PhD student on the Ecology & Evolution track of the Biology program. She works with Prof. Molly Schumer to study the impact of hybridization on the genetics and evolution of ecological traits in freshwater fishes. She aims to cultivate learning spaces that support students of all identities and backgrounds.
She is excited to continue working with LIT fellow Candice Kim to expand the Biology in Solidarity workshop series and STEM Mentor Network to build a community of teachers and mentors who practice inclusive teaching and mentorship of undergraduates. In addition to her projects with LIT, she implements the Stanford Biology PhD Preview program to improve transparency in the biology graduate program application process and teaches programming workshops through Lane Library to promote reproducibility in research.
Bendix Kemmann | Department of Philosophy
Bendix Kemmann (he/him) is a second-year PhD student in Philosophy. His research focuses on inference and the use of both formal and informal methods to better understand it. He has served, and continues to serve, as a teaching assistant for formal logic classes and loves working with other students. Bendix is particularly interested in making formal approaches to philosophical problems accessible. Bendix believes that philosophical inquiry benefits from a diversity of people, viewpoints, and methods, and wants to empower students to cultivate their own voices as philosophers in this shared space of inquiry.
For his LIT project, Bendix will be working with Caitlin Brust and Sydney Jordan to gain a better understanding of the teaching-related experiences and concerns of students and teaching assistants in Philosophy, and to design a web-based repository of teaching strategies to help teaching assistants apply the insights gained in the classroom.
Caitlin Murphy Brust | Department of Philosophy
Caitlin Murphy Brust (she/her) is a sixth-year PhD candidate in Philosophy of Education. She studies educational justice both philosophically and empirically, exploring what constitutes (un)just epistemic environments in U.S. higher education and how educators, students, and institutions can combat various forms of epistemic injustice within these environments. In both her research and teaching, she thinks a lot about intellectual friendship and mentorship in the formation of one’s academic identity and flourishing. To that end, Caitlin values building intellectual communities for students to reflect on their academic institutions as well as their ethical responsibilities as learners, researchers, and educators.
For her LIT Fellowship Project, she will be collaborating with Sydney Jordan and Bendix Kemmann to create accessible and sustainable online pedagogical resources for teaching assistants in the Philosophy Department.
Sydney Jordan | Department of Philosophy
Sydney is a second-year PhD student in the Philosophy Department and a JD student in Stanford Law School. Her research and teaching interests lie in philosophy of law, applied ethics, and moral and social philosophy. Sydney believes that diverse participation and thoughtful discourse are crucial to successful learning environments in philosophy. She looks forward to exploring, promoting, and implementing inclusive teaching strategies that facilitate engagement across the department, and especially for students form underrepresented backgrounds.
For her LIT project, Sydney will be working with Caitlin Brust and Bendix Kemman to better understand the needs and experiences of teaching assistants and students in philosophy and to build a centralized resource of inclusive teaching tools to facilitate inclusive teaching.
Lloyd May | Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics
Lloyd May (He/Him) is a 3rd-year Ph.D. Candidate in Music Technology at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics with a research focus on accessibility, design, and interaction.
His LIT Fellows project involves creating and facilitating a recurring event within his department focused on practical tips and nuanced discussions centered around inclusive pedagogy and how we might collectively improve things as a department.
Lloyd was born and raised in Carletonville, a small mining town in central South Africa, and enjoys making and playing digital games.
Callan Monette | Department of Bioengineering
Callan Monette (she/her/hers) is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Bioengineering. She works in the Fan Yang Lab developing tissue-engineered 3D cancer models. Within and beyond the lab, she is passionate about science education, outreach, and communication. Callan believes that communicating science in an accessible and equitable way is an essential skill and responsibility for every scientist, and she is committed to building these skills and creating training opportunities for scientists and engineers at every experience level to practice and value inclusive pedagogy. In addition to her work with LIT, Callan is a graduate teaching consultant with the Center for Teaching and Learning, a co-coordinator of the Bioengineering TA program, and a member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Stanford Chapter.
As a LIT fellow, she is working with Will Yu and Andrew Perley to implement a Bioengineering TA training course with a focus on inclusive and equitable teaching practices.
Andrew Perley | Department of Bioengineering
Andrew Perley (he/him) is a fourth-year PhD Candidate in the Department of Bioengineering. He works in Todd Coleman’s lab with a focus on signal processing and understanding the electrophysiological mechanisms of the gut and the brain. He has always had a passion for helping others learn from a young age and continues to strive to learn new ways to provide learners with equitable opportunity. Andrew strongly believes that it is our job as educators to help students find confidence in their ability to learn and build community with others. In pursuit of building more inclusive and equitable systems in education, he strives to learn new ways to affect how we implement education at the department and school level.
This year, as a LIT fellow, Andrew will serve as co-coordinator for the Bioengineering TA program and co-instructor for Bioengineering’s inclusive pedagogy class (BioE296).
Will Yu | Department of Bioengineering
Will Yu (he/him) is a second-year Ph.D. Student in the Department of Bioengineering. He works in Nidhi Bhutani’s lab studying mechanotransduction pathways of aging, senescence, and osteoarthritis. Will is passionate about making science more accessible, engaging, and fun for anyone to take part in. Prior to Stanford, Will taught math and physics for students grades 9-12 at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA from 2018-2021 where he designed novel curriculum to address diversity in STEM higher education. He also uses his platform of 13,000 followers on Twitch.tv to host livestreamed conversations on topics like exciting new science discoveries or social justice and educational reform.
This year, Will will serve as a co-instructor for BIOE296 Equitable and Effective Teaching in Bioengineering, and is excited to continue mentoring high school and undergraduate students in a research setting.
Gabi Gavrila | Graduate School of Education
Gabi Gavrila is an international PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Education, where she focuses on diversity and sustainability initiatives in higher education. Originally from Romania, Gabi worked abroad in the United Kingdom prior to coming to Stanford, where she administered a flagship scholarship program for international scholars. Gabi discovered her passion for teaching as a PhD student, having served as a TA for more than 10 courses in her time at Stanford.
As a LIT fellow, Gabi will develop an online resource tool that collates best practices for engaging with international learners, as well as best practices for international students expected to fulfill instructional responsibilities within their departments, in a project tentatively titled “Introduction to TA-ing FOR & BY international students.”
Julia Markel | Department of Computer Science
Julia (she/her) is a second year PhD student in the computer science department. She works at the intersection of human-computer interaction and computational education, with specific interests in using multimodality (voice, text, gestures, etc.) for online learning experiences (e.g., textbooks, problem sets, discussion forums). Julia believes deeply in the power of peer teaching and is eager to explore how we can design and build tools to support peer teaching at scale and, more broadly, at a global level.
For her LIT project Julia will be developing and deploying TA training materials and methods for the computer science department.
Michelle Ha | Modern Thought and Literature program
Michelle Ha (she/her) is a second-year PhD student in Modern Thought & Literature researching the history of Korean indentured labor migration to Mexican plantations. She aims to present this story as a case study for theorizing race, colonialism, and migration justice. Her work is informed by her prior training and practice in immigration and refugee law.
As a LIT fellow, Michelle is organizing an UndocuAlly workshop series for graduate student TAs that will provide training on the educational challenges posed by immigration status and how to develop inclusive and equitable teaching practices that better support undocumented students in the classroom.
Micheal Duchesne | Department of Classics
Micheal Duchesne is a third year PhD student in Classics. His research focuses on enslavement, the experiences of the enslaved, and the construction of ethnic identities. His hope is to stress the humanity of people who have had it denied from them historically. His experiences both growing up in an impoverished community and working as an instructor there shaped his desire to work towards inclusion and removing the veil of invisibility surrounding people in similar conditions.
This year, he joins Classics LIT fellows Rachel Dubit and Sarah Wilker in developing an upper-level graduate pedagogy class focused on inclusive, diverse, equitable, anti-Racist, and accessible course planning. This project is a continuation of the Classics department's involvement in the IDEAL pedagogy initiative.
Rachel Dubit | Department of Classics
Rachel Dubit (she/her) is a fifth year PhD student in Classics. Her research focuses on genre, gender, and landscape in Roman love poetry. As an instructor, she aims to bring increased relevance to studies of the ancient world through approaches to Ancient Greek and Latin pedagogy that are welcoming to students of all backgrounds and experiences. Because of her upbringing in rural Southwestern Virginia, Rachel is particularly passionate about making the Classics accessible and engaging to students who might not normally have the opportunity to encounter them at the secondary level.
This year, she joins Classics LIT fellows Sarah Wilker and Micheal Duchesne in developing an upper-level graduate pedagogy class focused on inclusive, diverse, equitable, anti-Racist, and accessible course planning. This project is a continuation of the Classics department's involvement in the IDEAL pedagogy initiative.
Sarah Wilker | Department of Classics
Sarah Wilker (she/her) is a sixth year PhD student in Classics. Her research uses archaeological ceramics and computational modeling to investigate social and economic communities in the ancient Mediterranean, specifically communities from late Classical and Hellenistic (c. 400-100 BCE) Turkey and Greece. As an instructor at Stanford, she has taught courses in Greek history, Greek and Roman archaeology, and Greek language, and she has also had the opportunity to teach in K-12 classrooms and archaeological field schools. Across all classrooms, she aims to empower student participation in discussions of Greek and Roman civilization, and to show how all perspectives are vital for shaping equitable and inclusive discussions of the past and the modern legacies it has produced.
This year, she joins Classics LIT fellows Rachel Dubit and Micheal Duchesne in developing an upper-level graduate pedagogy class focused on inclusive, diverse, equitable, anti-Racist, and accessible course planning. This project is a continuation of the Classics department's involvement in the IDEAL pedagogy initiative.
Sonia Martin | Department of Mechanical Engineering
Sonia Martin (she/her) is a third year PhD candidate in mechanical engineering. Her research is in the field of energy systems; specifically in grid-scale battery modeling and electric vehicle charging optimization.
As a LIT fellow, she will work toward adapting the mechanical engineering teaching and course assistant training program to provide both practical skills as well as tools to educate students from a variety of engineering backgrounds. Especially in a field as diverse as mechanical engineering, her goal is to create a training program that equips TAs for inclusive teaching across lecture, lab, and project courses.
Ahmed Elnahhas | Department of Mechanical Engineering
Ahmed Elnahhas (he/him) is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at the Center for Turbulence Research, advised by Professor Parviz Moin. His research is in the field of wall-bounded turbulent flows. He focuses on developing novel methods for identifying dynamical processes between wall-bounded coherent turbulent structures and distilling this information into non-equilibrium reduced-order models for wall-modeled large-eddy simulations. His teaching experiences taught him that teaching is a skill that relies on more than one’s technical knowledge of the material but also on one’s ability to engage and connect with students of diverse backgrounds. As a LIT fellow, Ahmed will work toward adapting the mechanical engineering teaching and course assistant training program to provide both practical skills as well as tools to educate students from a variety of engineering backgrounds. Especially in a field as diverse as mechanical engineering, the goal is to create a training program that equips TAs for inclusive teaching across lecture, lab, and project courses.
Billie Goolsby | Department of Biology
Billie (she/they) is a 4th year graduate student in the Biology Department. She studies what makes poison frogs such great parents in the Lab of Organismal Biology led by Dr. Lauren O’Connell, and does Disability advocacy in her free time on an educational and institutional level.
Billie cofounded bioBUDS: Building up Developing Scientists with Ty, Ev, Seba, and Iris to create a class that synthesizes community, science sharing, and advocacy. As a LIT fellow, she hopes to learn ways to improve BioBUDS, her own pedagogy, and contribute to making science education more equitable and accessible for all.
Ev Nichols | Department of Biology
Ev Nichols (they/them) is a 4th year PhD student in the department of Biology. They work in the lab of Dr. Kang Shen studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodevelopment. Ev believes that instruction is a fundamental duty of scientists in the classroom, the lab, and the public forum.
Ev co-facilitates bioBUDS (Building Up Developing Scientists) with Ty Hammond, Iris Möllhoff, Billie Goolsby, and Seba Toro Arana. As a LIT Fellow, they aim to expand resource networks for graduate students in instructing roles, both in the classroom as teachers and in the lab as mentors.
Iris Mollhoff | Department of Biology
Iris Mollhoff (she/her) is a 4th year Biology PhD student. She is co-mentored by Dr. Mary Beth Mudgett and Dr. Elizabeth Sattely studying plant-pathogen interactions and plant biochemistry. Iris believes that learning is a community effort that should be accessible, equitable, and fun for all participants.
Iris co-founded and is an instructor for bioBUDS (Building Up Developing Scientists) with Taylar Hammond, Ev Nichols, Billie Goolsby, and Seba Toro Arana. As a LIT fellow she hopes to connect with others who are passionate about improving pedagogic practices in higher STEM education.
Seba Toro Arana | Department of Biology
Seba Toro Arana (he/him) is currently a 3rd year grad student in the Moi Lab. He’s interested in understanding complex traits in plants such as drought tolerance with the end goal of breeding crops to be more resistant to climate change. He believes that teaching that is accessible and inclusive is key for a fair and just society.
Seba helps facilitate the bioBUDS (Building Up Developing Scientists) program with the help of the team (Ty, Ev, Billie, Iris). As a LIT Fellow, he hopes to be able to help people in academia improve their teaching and mentoring skills.
Taylar/Ty Hammond | Department of Biology
Taylar/Ty Hammond (any pronouns) is a 4th year Biology PhD student. She works in the lab of Dr. Julien Sage studying the impact of uncharacterized proteins on cell fate decision making. Taylar believes accessible education in formal and informal settings is central to equity in academia and beyond.
Taylar co-founded and leads the bioBUDS (Building Up Developing Scientists) program (along with team: Ev Nichols, Billie Goolsby, Iris Mollhoff, and Seba Toro Arana), and as a LIT fellow they hope to continue to improve this program, in particular to expand opportunities for graduate students to learn and practice teaching skills.