Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning (CITL)

Rebecca Davis is a Ph.D. student in the Anthropology department, focusing on historical archaeology. Rebecca was selected for the year-long Campus Fellows program (formerly Chancellor’s Graduate Intern Program) to work with CITL throughout 2020-21 on the topic “Divisional Anti-Racist Pedagogies: The Development of Resources to Facilitate Inclusive, Equitable and Anti-Racist Frameworks into Teaching Practices.”

Rebecca’s research is rooted in the African diaspora and black feminist perspectives, and Rebecca studies enslaved spaces of colonial Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti), the site of the only successful large-scale rebellion by enslaved populations. As a future educator, Rebecca’s primary goal is to keep the pipeline into the field of archaeology and anthropology diverse and accessible—specifically, diversity in its student populations, accessibility to opportunities, the courses being offered, and the individuals doing the teaching.

Salvador Huitzilopochtli is a doctoral candidate in Mathematics Education.  His research investigates how to use mathematical writing to support middle school students to compose more sophisticated mathematical arguments in early algebraic courses.  Mr. Huitzilopochtli received his BA in Rhetoric, Masters in Education, and Single-Subject Teaching Credential (Mathematics) from UC Berkeley.  His work is informed by ten years of experience as a middle-school mathematics teacher in culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse schools.  Mr. Huitzilopochtli’s work centers on equity and draws upon his additional experience working in violence prevention, academic support, and mentoring.

Jessica Calvanico is a Ph.D. candidate in Feminist Studies with emphases in Visual Studies and Anthropology. Her dissertation explores histories of girlhood, carcerality, racialization, and sexuality. She holds an M.A. in Social Sciences with a concentration in linguistic anthropology from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Anthropology from the George Washington University. As an educator, she has taught across the humanities, social sciences, and arts at SUNY Stony Brook, the Pratt Institute, Sonoma State University, and California College of the Arts. Over the summer of 2019, she participated in the National Humanities Center’s graduate student residency program, “Objects and Places in an Inquiry-Based Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Humanities.” With CITL, she is developing curriculum for an inter-divisional certificate program in teaching disciplinary writing.

Nathan Xavier Osorio is the son of a Mexican grocer and Nicaraguan nurse. His poetry and translations have appeared in BOMB, The Offing, The Grief Diaries, Boston Review, and elsewhere. His reviews and interviews featuring poets such as Juan Felipe Herrera and Rigoberto González have appeared in Columbia Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Letras Latinas’ La Bloga. Before coming to UCSC, he was a community organizer partnering with parent leaders to improve educational experiences of Latinx, immigrant, and indigenous families in the South Bronx. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Literature and Creative/Critical Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is excited to support the instructional community in the Literature Department and beyond as a graduate pedagogy fellow!

Mecaila Smith is a Ph.D. candidate and Cota-Robles Fellow in Education at UC Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on learning in higher education, with a particular emphasis on metacognition, universal design for learning, and transformative learning. For CITL, she has been a co-facilitator of a course in effective teaching practices, a curriculum designer for workshops, and a mentor for graduate student instructors teaching summer courses. In addition to working with CITL, she has also taught for several quarters in the Writing Program, and collaborated with the Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching on projects related to student experience of teaching (SETs) and measures of teaching effectiveness. Prior to joining the UC Santa Cruz community, she lived in upstate New York where she was a fellowship adviser and managed an undergraduate research program for minorities and women in the STEM fields at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). She has a B.A. in writing/Spanish literature (UC San Diego), a secondary school teaching credential in English education (Cal State Long Beach), a Master’s degree in management, technology and entrepreneurship (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), and a Master’s degree in educational administration, higher education (University at Albany, SUNY).

Sylvane is a Chicano graduate student in Social Psychology at UC Santa Cruz and is developing a multi-method portfolio of research that addresses educational equity issues from elementary school to college. When he isn’t collaborating with local youth on a participatory action research project, he is researching higher-educational culture, community, and sense of belonging for underrepresented students. Sylvane has been a researcher for three Hispanic Serving Institution initiatives at UCSC, 1) M.A.P.A, 2) Cultivamos Excelencia and 3) S.E.M.I.L.L.A., studying counterspaces, transfer receptive culture, and STEM retention. Currently, he is interested in how elements of a smaller learning community in the College Math Academy can benefit underrepresented students in their early STEM careers. In 2019-20, Sylvane is serving as the CITL/Division of Student Success Graduate Student Researcher in Student Mental Health & Resilience to develop practical strategies for supportive learning environments.

Yulia Gilichinskaya is a Film & Digital Media Ph.D. student. She is a media artist and theorist whose interests revolve around border studies, critical geography, affect theory as well as surveillance studies and militaristic technology. As an educator, she is dedicated to practicing inclusive teaching as well as collaborative and active learning.

Chessa Adsit-Morris is a curriculum theorist, and member of the Center for Creative Ecologies and the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure. She comes to the CITL from the University of British Columbia where she coordinated a five-year educational research and teacher professional development program. She is the author of Restorying Environmental Education: Figurations, Fictions, Feral Subjectivities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Visual Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She has worked with universities, NGOs, school boards and municipal authorities across the world to translate complex scientific research into approachable, teachable theory, creating strategies and resources that help to guide policies and practices toward creating a healthy and more sustainable future.

Megan is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology researching how UC Santa Cruz instructors navigate university-wide curricular changes to College 1, a first-year undergraduate course formerly known as “Core.” She also teaches a different first-year course, Writing 2, with a focus on students’ fears of writing, of failure, and of being an “imposter” at the university. Megan has worked with CITL to help evaluate the Graduate Pedagogy Fellows program to better understand the impact of this program on undergraduates’ experiences in TA-led discussion sections.

Tatiane S. Santa Rosa is a Ph.D. candidate at the History of Art and Visual Culture Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her dissertation focuses on the visual culture around race, ethnicity, and state violence in Brazil. She was a 2018-19 Whitney Museum Independent Study Program fellow (Critical Studies) and holds an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts and an MA in Art History from Sotheby’s Institute of Art.  She has been a visiting faculty at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of California Santa Cruz. She has also worked as an independent curator, organizing exhibitions at museums and art galleries in the US and abroad. Her essays and reviews have been published by Guernica, The Brooklyn Rail, ARTNews, and Hyperallergic, among others.

Ana McTaggart studies computer privacy at UC Santa Cruz, with a focus on protecting activists against repressive regimes. Before coming to UCSC, Ana completed an undergraduate degree at UMass Amherst with a focus in theoretical computer science and math. Ana is an activist in the UC Student-Workers Union, and cares deeply about educational quality for students. Ana’s work at CITL focused on encouraging academic honesty for programmers, and creating a culture of integrity in engineering. This work adopted a holistic approach, taking into account student goals, faculty requirements, and identifying and supporting educational challenges and needs within STEM.

Kristin Miller has served as CITL’s Web Designer and Editor, and is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology with a Designated Emphasis in Film & Digital Media. She is a contributor to and Web Designer and Editor for the No Place Like Home and Critical Sustainabilities projects at UC Santa Cruz, and previously worked as an Associate Web Editor for the Guggenheim Museum. At UCSC, she has developed a specialization in adapting educational and research projects for the web using the best practices of Digital Humanities. She has a background in journalism and digital media, and an M.A. in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU. She is currently working on a multimedia project on the role of Silicon Valley in reshaping the Bay Area, and studies cities, environmentalism, and technology, with research interests in science-fiction literature and film. Her work has been published in Boom: A Journal of California, Slate, and Gizmodo, among others.

Nadia Roche is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Sociology Department at UC Santa Cruz who works in the fields of Embodiment, Race, and Visual Culture and investigates the growing industry of cosmetic genital surgery. Nadia believes that the increasing intolerance of women and their bodies paired with global patterns of increasing commodification of the body and sexuality impacts the psychological and physical well being of women. Nadia has garnered Teaching Fellowships and TA-ships, the Chancellor’s Graduate Internship and the Graduate Student Body Presidency. Nadia holds a B.A. in Women and Gender Studies from UC Davis, an M.Sc. in Globalization, Development, and Gender from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an M.A. in Sociology from UC Santa Cruz.

Sheeva Sabati received her Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Foundations of Education in the UC Santa Cruz Education Department, with designated emphases in the Feminist Studies Department and the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Program. Her research examines the racial-colonial entanglements of higher education in the United States and considers the ethical limits of institutional responses to these contexts. As a former Graduate Student Researcher with CCREC, the Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California, Sheeva also worked on a project to consider how Community-Based Collaborative Research Methodologies trouble the traditional principles and practices of institutionalized research ethics. With CITL, Sheeva developed an online Professional Ethics Course for Teaching Assistants to introduce new TAs to evidence-based principles and practices to support learning and equity in the classroom.

Michelle Yee is a Ph.D. candidate in Visual Studies in the History of Art and Visual Culture Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Her dissertation examines race and representation through the visual culture of Asian American artists and performers.  Michelle holds an MA in Art History from the University of Connecticut and a BA in Art History and English from Georgetown University.  She has taught at Queens College, UC Santa Cruz, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her writing can be found in Third Text, Panorama, Art, Etc., and various exhibition catalogues.

Kirstin Wagner is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Literature’s Creative/Critical Writing Program. Her research concerns inherited trauma in families organizing around domestic violence, and she writes weird poems about bodies, mothers, daughters, and the ocean. Before coming to UC Santa Cruz, she received an M.A. in Communication and Culture from Indiana University and an M.F.A. in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University, where she also served as Manager of the Naropa Writing Center and as a Curriculum Consultant for the Undergraduate Writing Program. She loves teaching in all forms and is thrilled to have developed an archive of resources surrounding faculty, graduate, and undergraduate mentorship at the CITL. She also serves a CITL Graduate Pedagogy Fellow in the Literature Department and focuses on animating the embodied aspects of teaching and learning.

Talia Waltzer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Psychology department studying cognitive development, ethics, and decision-making. Before coming to UC Santa Cruz, Talia received a B.A. in Psychology and Cognitive Science from Rutgers University. Talia studies how people form beliefs about what is right and wrong and why people sometimes seem to act against their better judgments. In particular, Talia’s project focuses on the psychology behind cheating and academic integrity. Although academic misconduct is a serious concern across multiple departments at UCSC, the conversation surrounding academic integrity is sometimes uninformed by students’ own perspectives on the matter. In collaboration with CITL, Talia’s project aimed to uncover how students think about academic misconduct and why it happens, with the aim of translating these insights into new practices and tools for promoting academic integrity at UCSC and beyond.