Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Showing 1-20 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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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 natural sciences with other disciplines such as theology, philosophy, and literature. 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 sustainable flourishing.
In his free time, find Tony bird watching, baking, playing a board game, or trying a new food. -
Altair Brandon-Salmon
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioAltair Brandon-Salmon is a lecturer in the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) programme. He is an art historian writing a book on how bombsites shaped British art and architecture during the twentieth century. More broadly, he focuses on British and American art which is intertwined with violence, memory, and mortality.
His scholarship has been published by Art History, Art Journal, and the Oxford Art Journal, written exhibition catalogue essays for the Cantor Arts Center and the Museum Barberini, and given lectures at the Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of York, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. His essays have appeared in America, Commonweal, Literary Review, and Public Seminar, while his fiction has been published by The Isis and the Oxford Review of Books. He is currently editing a volume for the Roxburghe Club on the eighteenth-century antiquarian, archaeologist, and Jacobite dissident James Byres.
Brandon-Salmon was the assistant curator at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and the curatorial assistant at the Sheldonian Theatre.
He is represented by Orli Vogt-Vincent at David Higham Associates.
Education
Ph.D., Stanford University, Art History (2024)
M.St., Christ Church, University of Oxford, History of Art (2019)
B.A., Wadham College, University of Oxford, History of Art (2018) -
Caitlin Brust
COLLEGE Lecturer
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCaitlin 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 themselves can resist various forms of epistemic injustice within these environments. Her interdisciplinary research draws from feminist and social epistemology, liberal and democratic education, and ethical and political theory; she also uses qualitative methods to explore how college students and educators identify as knowers and navigate relations of knowledge, identity, and power in the liberal arts seminar classroom. Alongside arguments about formal teaching and learning practices, she studies the essential role of academic mentorship in undergraduate and graduate student life.
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Katherine Ding
SLE Lecturer
BioKatherine Ding is a Lecturer for Structured Liberal Education. She received an MA in English Literature and Critical Theory from UC Irvine, and a PhD in English Literature from UC Berkeley. Prior to arriving at Stanford, she taught both critical and creative writing at Mount Tamalpais College (formerly the Prison University Project) in San Quentin, at Outer Coast College in Sikta, Alaska, and at UC Berkeley.
Braiding creative non-fiction with critical analysis, Katherine’s dissertation on the British Romantic poet William Blake explores what it means for knowledge to be fully embodied, and what the disembodiment of knowledge has cost us. Her current book project expands that inquiry—diving into fields as diverse as the neuroscience of interoception, exercise science, anthropology, and childhood development—to explore how the human organism observes, feels, and learns in relation to others in its embodied milieu.
In the classroom, Katherine is fascinated by the ever-shifting question of how we learn. Where do our ideas come from? What practices foster and facilitate good thinking? How might writing transform rather than simply express our thoughts and ideas? What is the relationship between reading, thinking, feeling, and writing? -
Byron Gray
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioByron Gray is an anthropologist whose work centers on the intersection of politics, law, religion, and urban space in South Asia. His doctoral research examined the associational, legal, and ritual means that Catholics in Bombay, India have employed to advance spatial and property claims in the city since its transformation into “Mumbai” in the 1990s.
Prior to receiving his PhD, Byron earned a MPhil in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and BA in Political Science, South Asian Studies, and Law, Societies, & Justice from the University of Washington. -
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. -
Courtney Blair Hodrick
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioCourtney Hodrick is a Lecturer in Civic, Global, and Liberal Education (COLLEGE). She received her BA in Humanities, in the Intellectual History track, from Yale University in 2016. In the 2016-2017 academic year, she worked as an English Language Teaching Assistant through Fulbright Austria at the Pädagogoische Hochschule Vorarlberg. She completed her PhD in German Studies at Stanford University in 2023, and during the 2023-2024 academic year held the Eli Reinhard Stanford Alumni Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jewish Studies at Stanford's Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Courtney works on German-Jewish thought in the mid-20th century. Her dissertation focused on the role that hope plays in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt.
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Melissa A. Hosek
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioMelissa A. Hosek earned her Ph.D. in Chinese from the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. She specializes in modern Chinese literature with interests in environmental humanities, STS (science, technology, and society), and the digital humanities. Her dissertation, "The Ecological Imagination: Nature, Technology, and Criticism in Chinese Science Fiction: 1976-Today," examines how modern Chinese eco-perspectives are informed by and condition ideas about science and technology. She analyzes a wide range of notable science fiction films, novels, and short stories to argue that ideas about ecology are deeply entangled with ideas about scientific progress, but can also serve as a vehicle for critiquing scientific development.
Melissa is also interested in higher education pedagogy and Chinese language teaching and learning. She earned certificates in Language Program Management and ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviewing from Stanford's Language Center. She has taught classes in Mandarin Chinese, film studies, Chinese literature, and East Asian Studies. In the field of digital humanities, she has developed several projects and received the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities from Stanford's Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis. Her other research interests include materialism, science fiction studies, critical theory, and nationalism. -
Grace Huckins
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioGrace Huckins is a lecturer with the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education program. They earned their PhD in neuroscience from Stanford, where they also completed a PhD minor in philosophy. Their research centers on explanation in neuroscience: they explore approaches for developing brain-based explanation of human experiences and behaviors, and they simultaneously investigate whether or not those explanations are likely to be of value to the general public. Alongside their research and teaching, they also write about neuroscience, health, and artificial intelligence for publications like WIRED, Slate, and MIT Technology Review.
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Michaela Hulstyn
SLE Lecturer
BioMichaela Hulstyn is a Lecturer in Structured Liberal Education (SLE), a first-year residential education program at Stanford University.
Her first monograph, _Unselfing: Global French Literature at the Limits of Consciousness_, is forthcoming with the University of Toronto Press in 2022. Her research interests center on 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone literature, phenomenology of the self and intersubjectivity, cognitive approaches to transcultural literature, and literature as ethical philosophy. Her work has appeared in MLN, Philosophy and Literature, and Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, among other places.
She previously held academic appointments at Florida State University and Reed College. -
Joseph Kidney
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioJoseph Kidney is a Lecturer for Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE). He received a PhD in English Literature from Stanford University in 2024. An early modernist, his work looks at sixteenth-century literature, particularly drama, against the backdrop of the European and English Reformations. His dissertation examined the sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory projects of Reformation and Renaissance as they drastically reshaped intellectual culture and gave rise to new forms of vernacular literature. In this project and elsewhere, he has a particular interest in classical reception, rhetorical theory, early modern humanism, Renaissance comedy, and the cultural transformations regarding attitudes to the dead.
His academic publications include work on the dramatists Nicholas Udall, William Shakespeare, and John Webster, drawing on early modern thought ranging from theology to proto-scientific treatises. Other work supplements these historicist approaches with twentieth- and twenty-first-century methodologies derived from queer theory, considerations of metatheatre, and genre theory. He has also published on pedagogy, articulating strategies for teaching old plays in modern classrooms. He has taught, as instructor of record, classes on Shakespeare and on Renaissance Literature, and served as a teaching assistant for literary surveys from Beowulf to Jane Austen, as well as for Poetry and Poetics. He has worked as an assistant editor for the Stanford Global Shakespeare Encyclopedia and as a Graduate Coordinator for Stanford's Renaissances working group.
Outside of academia, he has received numerous awards for poetry, including, most recently, the Grand Prize in Arc Poetry Magazine's Poem of the Year contest. His poems have appeared, among other places, in Best Canadian Poetry 2024 and been nominated for a National Magazine Award. A full length debut will appear in March 2025. -
Hyoung Sung Kim
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioI am interested in the history of philosophy, in particular Kant and post-Kantian German idealism. I am specifically interested in how Kant and his successors saw the relation between questions in epistemology (knowledge), logic (rules for thinking), and metaphysics (what there is).
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Meade Klingensmith
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioMeade Klingensmith is a Lecturer for Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) and a historian of Britain and the British Empire. He received his PhD in History from Stanford in 2022, his MA in Modern History from the University of Kent in 2014 (where he was a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar), and his BA in History from Oberlin College in 2012.
In addition to his teaching with the COLLEGE program, he has taught on British, Middle East, and World history and on the global history of pacifism and nonviolence. Outside of Stanford, Meade is committed to public, community, and high school education, having volunteered in multiple capacities at Sequoia High School in Redwood City. He is also a multi-instrumentalist musician who loves to incorporate music and music history in the classroom. -
Elaine Lai
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioElaine Lai is a Lecturer for Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) who has spent over a decade of her life working and studying in Nepal, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, and China, where she made many lifelong friends.
Elaine is a scholar of Buddhism, trained in the languages of Tibetan, Chinese, and Sanskrit. She specializes in a tradition known as the Great Perfection in Tibet. Elaine’s recent research explores the relationship between Buddhist literature and time, specifically, how form and content interplay to cultivate more compassionate temporal relationalities. Elaine is committed to making the study of Buddhism accessible to a wider audience through technology and the arts. As a part of her dissertation, she created an intertextual heatmap to trace the citational history of a scripture throughout an important corpus of Great Perfection literature. Elaine also created a virtual reality (VR) experience to present Great Perfection history in a novel way.
At Stanford, Elaine has co-taught different courses in Religious Studies and guest lectured in Asian American Studies. In 2022, Elaine is proud to have created and taught the course “Queering Buddhism: Gender, Sexuality, and Liberatory Praxis.” This course sought to investigate the possibilities and constraints to “queering” or transforming any institution, and how the fields of queer studies and feminist studies might constructively and ethically be in conversation with Buddhist theories of liberation. In her pedagogy, Elaine emphasizes the importance of reciprocity, respect, and co-creation. Elaine is a firm believer that the process of how we engage in dialogue is as important, if not more important, than what the ultimate outcome of our conversations might be.
In Elaine’s free time, she writes screenplays (film and TV), spanning the genres of comedy, sci-fi, animation, historical drama, and more.
