Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Showing 1-10 of 39 Results
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David Armenta
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioDavid Armenta is a lecturer for the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) program. He earned his bachelor's degree in molecular and cellular biology from Harvard University. Working as an undergraduate intern in the lab of Andrew Murray, he studied mechanisms underlying evolution and adaptation in budding yeast. Next, he earned his PhD in biology (cells, molecules, and organisms track) from Stanford University, working with Scott Dixon to study how amino acid metabolism regulates sensitivity of cancer cells to the nonapoptotic cell death mechanism of ferroptosis.
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Ruth Averbach
Lecturer
BioRuth Averbach is a Teaching Fellow in the Program for Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE). She holds a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University. Her dissertation, "Writing Women: Gender, Representation, and Alterity in Russian Realism," examines why male authors passionately took up the cause of women's rights in mid-19th century Russia. Ruth is currently writing a book on author and memoirist Alexander Alexandrov, commonly misnamed as Nadezhda Durova, which examines the author's transmasculine identity and his social reception among his contemporaries. The first chapter, "The (Un)Making of a Man," is available in article form in the Fall 2022 issue of Slavic Review.
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Kim Beil
ITALIC Associate Director
BioKim Beil is an art historian who specializes in the history of photography. Her book, Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography, looks at 50 stylistic trends in the medium since the 19th century. Recently she’s written for the New York Times about tracking down an Ansel Adams photograph in the High Sierra with a team of astronomers. She’s also written about photography and climate change for The Atlantic, a survey of street views for Cabinet, and a history of screenshots for the Believer. She also writes frequently about modern and contemporary art for Artforum, Art in America, BOMB, Photograph, and Sculpture magazines.
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Tony Boutelle
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioTony Boutelle teaches in the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) program. He earned a B.S. in Biology with a second major in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During his time at Chapel Hill, he conducted undergraduate research in the Alisa Wolberg Lab, studying the biochemistry of blood clotting and completing an honors thesis entitled "Investigating the binding interaction between human factor XIII and fibrinogen". Motivated to continue conducting research to understand biological processes that impact human health, he went on to complete a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, studying cancer genetics and cell biology in the Laura Attardi Lab. His dissertation, entitled "Understanding tumor suppression through the p53 target gene network", focused on illuminating the downstream effectors of the potent tumor suppressor, p53, and the molecular and cellular mechanisms important for tumor suppression.
Tony discovered his love for teaching as a supplemental instructor for "Principles of Biology" during his Junior and Senior years at UNC. At Stanford he served as a graduate teaching assistant for "Molecular and Genetic Basis of Cancer" and "Cancer Biology" and took on mentoring and outreach roles with various programs including REACH, GRIPS, PIPS, the Ashanti Project, EXPLORE, SIMR, Hermanxs in STEM, and Stanford SPLASH. Tony enjoys exploring the intersection of the "hard" sciences with other disciplines such as religion, philosophy, literature, etc. Through teaching, Tony hopes to create spaces that encourage students and instructors alike to gain the skills and confidence to create a meaningful life for themselves and to shape communities that promote human flourishing.
In his free time, find Tony bird watching, baking, playing a board game, or trying a new food. -
Caroline Daws
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioCaroline is a Lecturer in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) and a fungal ecologist by training. She was born and raised in Tennessee and completed a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee and received her PhD in Fall 2022 in Ecology and Evolution at Stanford University with a doctoral minor from the Graduate School of Education. Caroline’s dissertation research focused on how symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi can shape the composition and functions of forests and what these interactions can teach us about the ways our forests are changing and how to steward them. Combining field studies in Big Basin State Park, seedling experiments in the greenhouse, and sequencing work in the lab, she studied how these fungal partners can facilitate the coexistence of multiple tree species in coast redwood forests in the Bay area, and how changes to microbial communities might have far reaching consequences in forest composition in the long term.
Caroline was drawn to ecology as a new lens through which to see and understand the world through intentional practices of noticing and naming. In her teaching, Caroline invites students to harness their own lived experiences to investigate, question, and grow the narratives we learn and tell about humans and the natural world. She has taught introductory ecology, scientific methodology and writing on lichen community ecology at Stanford, and most recently she taught field courses in intertidal ecology and fungal ecology at Outer Coast in Sitka, Alaska. When she's not in the lab or in the classroom, Caroline is probably in the kitchen, in the ceramics studio, or outside on foot or on a bike. -
Esiteli Hafoka
COLLEGE Lecturer
Bio'Esiteli Hafoka received her PhD and MA in Religious Studies from Stanford University, and her BA in Religious Studies and Ancient History from UC Riverside. Her research introduces a novel theoretical approach, Angafakafonua as Tongan epistemology, to understand Tongan collective identity in America. Her dissertation identifies religious threads connecting 19th c. Methodist Christianity, Mormonism, Tongan Crip Gang members in Utah, and sacred education spaces to reveal the ways Tongans navigate their racial identity in America through a religious epistemology. She has co-authored a chapter with Finau Sina Tovo titled, "Mana as Sacred Space: A Talanoa of Tongan American College Students in a Pacific Studies Learning Community Classroom" in Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies, NYU Press 2023.
'Esiteli is the proud daughter of Taniela and Latufuipeka (Hala'ufia) Hafoka, wife of Va'inga Uhamaka, and mother of Sinakilea and Latufuipeka. -
Katelyn Hansen-McKown
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioKatelyn is a Lecturer in the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) program. She earned a B.S. in Biology at Stanford and completed an honors thesis on her research in the Fire Lab using the nematode C. elegans to examine metal toxicity in the presence of the chelator, glyphosate. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in Genetics from the Stanford School of Medicine, studying stomatal development in the temperate grass model and smaller relative to wheat, Brachypodium distachyon, in the Bergmann Lab. Stomata are pores on the surfaces of leaves that regulate gas and water exchange. They are essential in managing the plant’s nutrient circulation, temperature, and water use efficiency, and therefore have important implications for drought tolerance. Katelyn’s research focused on characterizing members of a well-conserved transcription factor family involved in stomatal differentiation using genetic approaches to understand how grasses’ unique stomata are formed, including the creation of cross-species rescues to test for functional conservation across monocots and dicots.
Katelyn is also passionate about science communication and teaching, and has organized science outreach events through outlets such as Stanford’s Splash, Taste of Science, and Nightlife at the Cal Academy; tutored at the Hume Writing Center and for the Biology honors thesis writing class; and served as an Indigenous research mentor for first year Native students in Frosh Fellows. When she’s not in the lab or classroom, Katelyn can be found gardening, fishing, playing board games, or exploring the great outdoors.
