Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Showing 101-117 of 117 Results
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Kirsten Isabel Verster
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioHumanities Resume:
TBD
Teaching Resume: TBD
PhD/Science:
While most of us are familiar with vertical transfer (e.g. I get genes from my father and mother), I find horizontal gene transfer (HGT) - exchanging genes between species - far more compelling. Imagine if you ate a jellyfish and the next day you glowed in the dark and had poisonous stingers! The prevalence of HGT in natural history, and its ability to suddenly create incredible phenotypes in animals, is becoming more apparent every year. I am currently studying HGT of cytolethal distending toxin B in insects in the Integrative Biology Department at University of California - Berkeley. I discovered that cdtB was transferred into the genomes of several drosophilid and aphid lineages (Verster et al 2019, Molecular Biology and Evolution). I also recently found that cdtB (in addition to other toxin genes) was transferred into an agriculturally devastating clade of insects known as midges - and, interestingly, that living in the same habitat may increase the likelihood of HGT between organisms (Verster and Tarnopol et al 2021, Genome Biology and Evolution).
Education
BA, Spanish Literature, University of Florida, 2014
BA, Zoology, University of Florida, 2014
PhD, University of California - Berkeley, 2022
Postdoc, Stanford University, 2022 - 2024
COLLEGE Lecturer, 2024-present -
Meghan Warner
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioMeghan is a Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) Lecturer and a sociologist. She uses qualitative methods to study bodies as sites for the reproduction of gender inequality. More specifically, she studies sexual violence, family formation, and pregnancy and childbirth. Her work can be found in Sociological Perspectives, Contexts, and The Annual Review of Law and Social Science.
In her dissertation, she uses interviews, surveys, and observations to study how women in the SF Bay Area prepare for and experience their first births. This research is supported by grants from the American Sociological Association, the Center for Institutional Courage, the Stanford Ethnography Lab, and the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. -
Gregory Watkins
SLE Lecturer
BioGreg Watkins has taught in Structured Liberal Education (SLE) since 2002 and is a former Associate Director of the program. He has a BA in Social Theory from Stanford University, an MFA in Film Production from UCLA, and a dual PhD in Religious Studies and Humanities, also from Stanford University. Greg's research interests hover around the intersections of film and religion. He currently serves as a lecturer for SLE in a pilot program that provides an online moral philosophy class to students at Title 1 high schools. The course, called "Searching Together for the Common Good," is made possible through a collaboration with Stanford Digital Education and the National Education Equity Lab.
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Daniel Webber
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioDan Webber is a Lecturer in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE). Previously, he was a fellow at Stanford's McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. Dan received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 2023, and his BA in computer science from Amherst College in 2014. His research is on moral theory, with a particular focus on puzzles arising from the tension between morality's universality (it's about taking everyone into account) and its particularity (it's about how we relate to one another as individuals).
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Shannon Winters
Director of Finance and Administration, Stanford Introductory Studies Operations
Current Role at StanfordDirector of Finance and Administration, Stanford Introductory Studies
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Christopher Yang
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioChristopher Yang is a historian of early Chinese religions who studies the texts and traditions of Warring States and early imperial China (roughly, those dating between the 5th c. BCE and the early 3rd c. CE). He is working on a book manuscript, based on his dissertation, that shows how a set of enduring ideas about the body, mind, spirit (神) and the scope of human powers was forged in exchanges between early practitioners of sacrifice, self-cultivation, medicine, and esoterica. His broader research interests concern the body and materiality; religious ethics; the relationship between text and practice; and later receptions of early Chinese texts.
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John Young
COLLEGE Lecturer
BioJohn Young is a lecturer in Civic, Liberal and Global Education (COLLEGE). John completed his Bachelor's at Dartmouth College before earning his M.S. and PhD in Political Science at Stanford University.
John’s research focuses on the built environment, and brings together scholarship from political theory, geography, economics, and psychology. Three big questions orient his work. How does the built environment affect the people who live in and move through it? How do laws, economics, and technology produce the built environment we have? Finally, do people have normative and political entitlements to physical space, and if so, what are they and how can they be secured in public space, private space, and with land-use policy?
John also works in the construction trades, building, repairing, and upgrading residential structures. He specializes in sustainable building and energy efficiency. John finds it deeply rewarding to help people enjoy their home and get more practical use from it, putting theory and practice together to create built environments conducive to human flourishing. -
Daniel Zimmer
COLLEGE Lecturer
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI combine political theory, the history of political thought, and science and technology studies to explore the political implications of nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, and cascading ecological collapse. My research focuses on the new kinds of political fissures that form when the survival of Life on Earth comes to depend on the outcome of human actions.
