CFDE DEI Teaching Fellows

How can we make our classrooms and campuses broadly accessible spaces, in which all students can fully participate and actively learn? 

CFDE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Teaching Fellows Program

DEI Fellow Profiles

Cohort 3: January 2025-May 2026 

Eladio Abreu is an Associate Teaching Professor in Biology in Emory College. The central theme of my teaching philosophy has been one of “engagement”.  Learning is accomplished best when one is actively participating in the lesson and material. My aim is to teach scientific concepts in an engaging manner that captivates my students. My lectures are designed to encourage students to ponder these concepts outside of my classroom. When possible, I try to use new technology and pedagogy to enhance my class.

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

Like other skills, mentoring is a process that improves with practice and training (NASEM 2019). Culturally responsive mentor training programs are an effective way to improve mentors’ abilities to support and respond to their trainees (Pfund et al., 2022; Black et al., 2022; Byars-Winston et al., 2023). Byars-Winston and colleagues developed the Culturally Aware Mentoring (CAM) training module specifically to address the need for evidence-based training for biomedical research mentors to better support the needs of their trainees (Byars-Winston et al., 2018). Their work has shown that the participants value the training, improve their awareness of culture and cultural skills, and increase confidence in addressing issues of culture in research (Suiter et al., 2024). It stands to reason that a community of practice centered on CAM will allow for collaboration, support, innovation, and success in mentorship efforts. Furthermore, positive changes in the overall research training environment can take root, creating lasting impact beyond the efforts of a handful of participants (Womack et al., 2020).  

With Leah Roesch, I intend to participate in the workshop to learn to facilitate the CAM module, and then offer it in the Emory community regularly. While we have a strong culture of supporting mentoring and mentor training, we do not have anyone on campus regularly offering workshops focusing on strengthening cultural awareness in mentoring practices. As trained facilitators of CAM, we will work with LGS and OPMTE to modify the curriculum for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who mentor our undergraduates. Together, we hope to demonstrate the effectiveness of the CAM workshops in improving the cultural awareness of our research mentors by building a learning community around CAM to enhance the training environment for all of our research trainees at Emory.  

Lydia Fort is in Associate Professor in Theater Studies in Emory College. Lydia Fort has directed at Cygnet Theatre, Diversionary Theatre, Perseverance Theatre, Women’s Project Theatre, Women Center Stage, Urban Stages, McCarter Theatre YouthInk! Festival, New Federal Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem, freeFall Theatre, Hangar Theatre, Planet Connections Festivity (where she was honored with the 2103 Best Director and Greener Planet Awards) as well as other festivals including the New Black Fest, 48 Hours in Harlem and the Fire This Time Festival. Lydia is the co-founder and artistic director of Akadēmeia Theatre Company; and has penned two performance pieces, Welcome to My Body and S/HE, which explore identity, culture, the body and illness. She was a member of the US delegation to the International Theatre Institute’s World Congress in China in 2011. Lydia was a Time Warner Foundation Fellow of the 2012-2014 Lab at Women’s Project Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop Directing Fellow, Drama League Fellow and a Theatre Communications Group (TCG) New Generations Future Leader grantee. Ms. Fort is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Union, the League of Professional Theatre Women, the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association and the artEquity 2017 cohort. Ms. Fort holds a BA from New York University and received both a Certificate in Arts Management for the Performing Arts and an MFA in Directing from the University of Washington.

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

As more people demand equity for identities long marginalized, there is a growing acceptance of rejecting Aristotle’s principles on theatre which have been the foundation of theatre since BCE. While many people use the term ‘non-Aristotelian dramaturgy’, I believe it still points to Aristotle as the norm and thus reaffirms a duality of right and wrong, the approved and mainstream vs the outlier and insignificant. I started to use the term Expansive Dramaturgy as it claims change as a requirement. It is elastic and malleable while remaining resilient. It is an invitation that understands that the greater diversity the stronger it is. In my Reading for Performance class Expansive Dramaturgy is the core from which all the student’s work begins and flows. 

Until recently I had seen this work as an effort to decolonize and de-canonize the materials in my courses, however when I heard about Culturally Relevant Pedagogies (CRP), I realized that my efforts in the classroom were also an effort to recognize and include the cultural heritage of the students in my courses. The project CRP is completely new to me, and so I propose learning and digging to literature on CRP (and the related Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and other offshoots) so that I can more intentionally embed CRP practices into my courses. My department is starting a new DEI committee which I will be serving on. My outcome will be three-fold. (1) to give a workshop on Expansive Dramaturgy which will include CRP, at a future ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) conference; (2) to present the workshop for the faculty in my department; and (3) share the learning gained from peer fellows in the program with the members of my department’s DEI committee. 

Maho Ishiguro is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology in Emory College and ethnomusicologist whose research focuses on performing arts of Indonesia. She uses dance and music as a lens for studying and engaging with Indonesian people, cultural practices, and living traditions. Maho studied Indonesian music and dance with renowned teachers in Central Java and the province of Aceh, Indonesia. Currently, she is working on her book project Gifts from the Waves: Acehnese Dance and Music in Post-Tsunami Aceh, Indonesia and Beyond. Her book project argues how traditional Acehnese dance and music has created a space for Indonesia’s young Muslim women to make sense of how to exist as both performing artists and pious Muslim, allowing them to pursue their artistic endeavors, navigate an increasingly conservative and patriarchal social climate and deepen their religious devotion. Maho brings together theoretical discourses on identity (race, ethnicity and gender) and religions, and practice of the arts and public-facing performances in order to create an interdisciplinary and creative teaching environment for engaging with the field of ethnomusicology.

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

Maho Ishiguro’s DEI Teaching Fellow Project focuses on raising awareness about appropriate practice in presenting performing arts from outside the Western canon on Emory campus. As a scholar whose research is based in ethnographic investigation and embodied practice of dance and music, programming concerts and engaging with performing artists are foundational to her scholarly work and teaching. As one of the founding members of the Asian Arts at Emory concert series, Maho has been deeply involved in presenting performing arts from South Asia and Southeast Asia on the Emory campus, bringing in artists from Indonesia as well as a variety of regions in the U.S. Having curated concerts on the Emory campus for the past five semesters, Maho has experienced challenges and encountered issues around curating public facing performances for the Asian Arts at Emory concert series. In particular, she has found that various art sectors of Emory needs reevaluation and reviews regarding creating appropriate performing and teaching spaces for art forms outside the Western canon, incorporating artists into classroom pedagogy, and accessibility to existing funding resources and support. Through this project, Maho aims to bring together a variety of performing arts sectors on campus as well as students in her courses to engage with practices and discourses about culturally appropriate practice of presenting performing arts on stages in the U.S., particularly on university campuses.

Christine Ristaino is a Professor of Practice in Italian in Emory College. Christine Ristaino is the Director of the Emory College Language Center and Professor of Practice at Emory University. She teaches courses on Italian diaspora, Baroque Italy, social justice in Italy utilizing memoir, comparative food studies, Immigrant identity through food, and language and culture. She has co-authored an academic publication entitled Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des Femmes” in Seventeenth-Century Italy through Farleigh Dickinson Press as well as the first edition of a book series called The Italian Virtual Class. Ristaino has also published an award-winning memoir titled All the Silent Spaces, which digs deep into the topic of violence. In addition, Ristaino has published articles in the Guardian, Pacific Standard, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine, Visible Magazine, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on child advocacy, coping with violence, and topics around diversity and equity.

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

As a CFDE DEI Fellow, I would like to explore the pedagogies of diversity, equity, and inclusion to engage respectfully and successfully in a teaching partnership with the College of the Muscogee Nation to take place in Spring 2026. To do so, I need to address critical issues in higher education, including unconscious bias, microaggressions, inclusive pedagogy, and equity-minded teaching in the context of the Muscogee culture. Some of the topics I would like to explore include redefining my course content to reflect the perspectives and histories of the Muscogee Nation, viewing community engagement through the lens of Muscogee ways of being and seeing the world, understanding and practicing allyship as it relates collaborations with tribal nations, addressing the unique challenges faced by indigenous and native students, developing learning strategies to help indigenous and native students thrive in my classroom, ensuring my teaching practices sustain and value the cultural diversity that will be present in my class during this exchange, and helping all my students transform to become more engaged citizens of the world.

Leah Roesch is an Associate Teaching Professor and the Director of Undergraduate Research in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology in Emory College. Originally from a small town in MN, I have been part of the Emory community since 1999. My graduate work on the molecular basis of neurodegenerative disease included a collaboration with my dissertation advisor Allan Levey and his colleagues in Reykjavik, Iceland. My work focused on molecular characteristics of candidate genes originally identified in the Icelandic population that may be linked to Parkinson’s disease susceptibility.

In addition to my research interests in the molecular basis of neurodegenerative disease, I work to improve science education and mentored research experiences for trainees at all levels. I use student-centered, active-learning teaching methods to support students in inquiry-based exploration of neuroscience. My teaching position allows me to not only teach amazing undergraduates in the classroom, but I also teach current and future faculty learning evidence-based methods of improving equity, inclusivity, and effectiveness in their teaching and mentoring practices.

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

Like other skills, mentoring is a process that improves with practice and training (NASEM 2019). Culturally responsive mentor training programs are an effective way to improve mentors’ abilities to support and respond to their trainees (Pfund et al., 2022; Black et al., 2022; Byars-Winston et al., 2023). Byars-Winston and colleagues developed the Culturally Aware Mentoring (CAM) training module specifically to address the need for evidence-based training for biomedical research mentors to better support the needs of their trainees (Byars-Winston et al., 2018). Their work has shown that the participants value the training, improve their awareness of culture and cultural skills, and increase confidence in addressing issues of culture in research (Suiter et al., 2024). It stands to reason that a community of practice centered on CAM will allow for collaboration, support, innovation, and success in mentorship efforts. Furthermore, positive changes in the overall research training environment can take root, creating lasting impact beyond the efforts of a handful of participants (Womack et al., 2020).  

With Eladio Abreu, I intend to participate in the workshop to learn to facilitate the CAM module, and then offer it in the Emory community regularly. While we have a strong culture of supporting mentoring and mentor training, we do not have anyone on campus regularly offering workshops focusing on strengthening cultural awareness in mentoring practices. As trained facilitators of CAM, we will work with LGS and OPMTE to modify the curriculum for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who mentor our undergraduates. Together, we hope to demonstrate the effectiveness of the CAM workshops in improving the cultural awareness of our research mentors by building a learning community around CAM to enhance the training environment for all of our research trainees at Emory.  

Steph Romo is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics/Hematology in the School of Medicine and a Pediatric Psychologist in the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorder Center at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She completed a pediatric psychology post-doctoral fellowship at Nemours Children’s Hospital – DE. She is an Indigenous Latina who is passionate about providing culturally attuned care to Latinx, Spanish-speaking families. Areas of interest include: lived experiences of patients, adherence promotion, and health equity.

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

Through this teaching fellowship, I hope to learn how to create courses with a decolonization mindset and approach to help the next generation of psychologists and practitioners view behavior and psychopathology outside the constraints of Eurocentrism. I hope to build a syllabus that is robust in its reading, assignments, and discussion related to decolonization in the field of psychology. I am also hopeful that experiences in this teaching fellowship would strengthen my work as a supervisor to psychology learners within Aflac Psychology.

Call for Faculty Participants, 2025-2026 (cohort #3)

The pedagogies of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) address practical ways instructors can make their classrooms, labs, or clinical settings more welcoming and engaging environments for all. These pedagogies also touch on a range of current issues in higher education, such as unconscious bias and microaggressions, inclusive pedagogy and equity-minded teaching along with how to make our classes accessible to all students.  All these issues are the subject of significant debates—not only amongst educators and school administrators, but also within public discourse and mainstream media. This fellowship aims to help faculty build competencies in these areas and then to develop a training that will share those competencies with a broader audience. This cohort starts in January 2025 and ends May 2026.  

Aims

• Support faculty from across the campus as they research and develop a project that focuses on a DEI topic. 
• Share research and strategies with the campus community 
• Expand the university’s DEI/Inclusive Pedagogy training curriculum, as faculty add new material to existing offerings 
• Support equitable teaching practices  
• Foster disciplinary and/or interdisciplinary approaches to inclusive classrooms  
• Highlight existing faculty teaching expertise 
• Expand the cohort of people who can lead workshops on discipline-specific DEI issues 

Program

• Open to all full-time faculty  
• 18 months long: starts in January and ends in May of the following year  
• $4000 stipend dispersed in four payments into a research or departmental account (it cannot be as salary) 
• Applicants must have a speedtype to which money can be disbursed

Eligibility

• All full-time faculty engaged in teaching  
• Record of excellent teaching and engagement with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work (or a willingness to learn more about it)

FAQ

Do applicants have to have DEI expertise to apply?

No, while we would like to hear about any DEI work that you may have done, if you don't have any DEI expertise/experience, we just ask that you have a willingness to learn and a clear project in mind. The goal of this fellowship is to build faculty competencies in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and Inclusive Pedagogy so that they can share those competencies in their own departments/schools/fields.

Where can I see more information about what the first cohort of fellows have done?

See below roster of 2024-25 fellows and their project descriptions.

I am up for tenure/writing a book/applying for a huge grant during the time of this fellowship. Is it a good idea to do both at the same time?This fellowship is a serious time commitment and may prove to be too much in addition to another such large project.

Consider how the different CFDE Faculty Fellowship programs compare (.pdf)

2024-25 Teaching Fellows

Jessica Barber is an Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Psychology in the College. Dr. Barber’s research interests focus largely upon attitude change in political contexts. Specific topics of interest include the relation between political attitudes and ideology, attitude polarization, selective exposure, and the persuasive function of language abstractness. 

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

I will explore assessment in the DEI space; that is, how to effectively assess DEI efforts and contributions, be them at the course, curricular, or institutional level. Potential questions of interest include:  how to identify and articulate appropriate learning outcomes; how to design, adapt, and implement appropriate measures for gauging progress toward them; how to use assessment data in practical and applicable ways to inform and improve future DEI work. 

Lauren Christiansen-Lindquist is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health. She is a Maternal and Child Health epidemiologist, with particular expertise on stillbirth in the United States. Her research interests include stillbirth prevention, and improving both stillbirth reporting and the care that families' receive around the time of a loss. Dr. Christiansen-Lindquist is an award-winning instructor, and also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for Emory's MPH and MSPH programs in Epidemiology.   

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

My project will focus on evaluating the implementation of antiracism competencies in the Department of Epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health, and identifying the next steps to enhance the inclusivity of our curriculum.   

Noelle Giguere is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of French and Italian in the College, where she teaches beginning and intermediate French and French and Francophone culture. Dr. Giguere’s research focuses on 20th and 21st century French and Francophone literature, visual studies, and women writers, as well as multiliteracies and transformative pedagogies in the language classroom. She has published chapters and articles in several edited volumes and journals including Literature/Film Quarterly and Contemporary French and Francophone Studies.   

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

I would like to develop an understanding of best practices for teaching and leading conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the beginning and intermediate foreign-language classroom. In one’s native language, DEI topics can already be fraught with miscommunication because of the difficulty of relaying lived experiences of intolerance and prejudice to others with different backgrounds. In a foreign language, these difficulties are amplified as students draw from a new and limited vocabulary that often does not signify in the same way as the equivalents in their native language. This fellowship will offer me the opportunity and support to conduct further research on the topic and develop guidelines to share with my colleagues in foreign language departments both at Emory and in the broader academic community.  

Nicholas Fesette is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Oxford College. As a theatre artist and scholar, he has directed or performed in over 50 productions in professional, academic, and community-based settings. He researches how performances—theatrical and mediatized—can contribute to resistant, liberatory, and abolitionist movements, and also how performance has historically served to support and circulate carceral logics by appealing to the white imagination. In part, this work draws upon his five years of experience working with the Phoenix Players Theatre Group, a company of incarcerated writers and performers located in Auburn Correctional Facility in Upstate New York (phoenixplayersatauburn.com).  

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

I will learn how to develop abolitionist practices for the classroom and also in theatre rehearsal spaces. I hope to work toward disrupting the carceral conventions, traditions, and demands of my field, and transforming performance pedagogy in a way that makes broad contributions—such as to activist movements like Stop Cop City.    

Hong Li is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures in the College and the Director of the Emory College Language Center. She teaches Chinese language courses at all levels, Classical Chinese, as well as courses on Chinese culture and Chinese linguistics. She also directs Emory’s summer study abroad program at Peking University. Dr. Li's research interests and publications lie in the areas of Chinese language pedagogy, second language acquisition, and Chinese syntax. She is the first author of Fun with Chinese Grammar: 35 Humorous Dialogues and Comics, and the six-volume series of Chinese textbooks Access China: A Classroom Video Course for Chinese Learning. 

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

I am interested in developing expertise in diversifying and expanding access to education abroad for underrepresented students. I hope to achieve the following: gain in-depth knowledge about current research on DEI in education abroad; gather resources on inclusive strategies and practices to diversify international education; apply to create an Academic Learning Community on the topic of diversifying education abroad; and share scholarships and engage in conversations with faculty and education abroad administrators and identify actionable plans. 

Yilang Tang is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine. He is board certified in General and Addiction Psychiatry and serves as Director of the Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship Program. He primarily works in the Substance Abuse Treatment Program at the Atlanta VA Healthcare System. He is a physician, medical educator and researcher. His research interests include substance use disorders, clinical psychopharmacology, and psychiatric genetics. Recently, he is collaborating with colleagues in China investigating mental health resources, mental health of healthcare professionals, and workforce sustainability.  

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

I aim to enrich our trainees' knowledge and skills in addressing disparity-related issues, such as social determinants of substance use disorders (SUDs), stigma, discrimination, and cultural competence. I hope to enhance our trainees' ability to conduct culturally sensitive and appropriate assessments and interventions for patients from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and to advocate for policies and practices that will promote health equity. I plan to address cultural competency in assessment and treatment of SUDs by developing training modules that will help trainees understand the cultural factors that contribute to SUDs in minority groups. I further plan to address health equity and disparity by developing training modules that will improve trainees’ awareness of the systemic inequities that contribute to SUDs in minority groups. 

Miriam Udel is Associate Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture in German Studies in the College. She is also the Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies at Emory University. She was ordained in 2019 as part of the first cohort of the Executive Ordination Track at Yeshivat Maharat, a program designed to bring qualified mid-career women into the Orthodox Jewish rabbinate. Dr. Udel is the author of Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. She is the editor and translator of Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature (NYU Press, 2020), winner of the Judaica Reference Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries. Dr. Udel’s translation of Chaver Paver’s 1935 story collection about the adventures of a lovable proletarian mutt became the basis for Theater Emory’s 2021 puppet film Labzik: Tales of a Clever Pup. Her full translation of the Labzik stories will appear in Fall 2024 with SUNY Press, and her critical study, Umbrella Sky: Children’s Literature and Modern Jewish Worldmaking, will be published next winter by Princeton University Press. 

DEI Teaching Fellow Project  

Jewish difference can be difficult to conceptualize accurately and has therefore remained an unstable category on the American DEI landscape even as the incidence of antisemitism has undeniably trended upward over the past decade. I hope to undertake a study to better understand this phenomenon and then to leverage my research and teaching on children’s literature and social justice to create an informative presentation for the Emory community and possibly, wider audiences. I hope to emerge from the fellowship with a training I could offer to others in the Emory community that would help to render Jewish difference—with its unique combination of privilege and vulnerability—legible in terms of DEI. 

Justin L. Williams is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine and a Pediatric Psychologist in the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She completed a pediatric psychology fellowship at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Dr. Williams’ medical practice focuses on children and young adults with cancer and blood disorders, psychological assessment, and serving as a pediatric consultation-liaison psychologist. Her research has focused on youth with sickle cell disease, including the transition from pediatric- to adult-based health care, psychosocial functioning, and resilience.  

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

I plan on melding my passion for advocacy and teaching by developing a social justice-informed syllabus for use within a graduate-level introduction to pediatric psychology course and a social justice-informed clinical supervision syllabus and contract for use with pediatric psychology learners obtaining clinical training.  Once these two products are developed, feedback will be solicited from pediatric psychologists who have experience engaging in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) work in clinical, teaching/educational, and research settings to ensure comprehensiveness and inclusiveness. After the incorporation of feedback, the course and supervision syllabi and supervision contract will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication to support the professional and applied activities of pediatric psychology. 

Deanna Womack is an Associate Professor of History of Religions and Interfaith Studies at Candler School of Theology and director of Candler’s Master of Religious Leadership program. Rev. Dr. Womack’s research and teaching combines commitments to interreligious understanding, Christian-Muslim dialogue, and world Christianity. Her first book, Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria (Edinburgh University Press 2019), explores encounters between American missionaries and Arab residents of Syria and Lebanon in the pre-World War I period. Womack’s second book, Neighbors: Christians and Muslims Building Community (Westminster John Knox Press, 2020) examines the history of Christian-Muslim relations and the practices of interreligious dialogue in the United States today. Her current research focuses on themes of gender and violence in American Protestant discourses on Islam. 

DEI Teaching Fellow Project

My objectives will be to: evaluate the ways my courses address race in the context of Christian-Muslim relations; explore resources for enhancing my current teaching and for centering race in a new course I will develop on Interfaith Leadership; and create a workshop on race and interfaith engagement to be offered at to be offered for the Candler faculty in 2025. 

2023-24 Teaching Fellows

• Anna Errore
• Devon Goss
• Jennifer Grant 
• Alex Grizzell
• Harshita Kamath
• Christina Lee
• Simba Nkomo
• Alix Olson 
• Angela Porcarelli
• Tehila Sasson
• Cristy Tower-Gilchrist
   

Facilitators

• Cecilia Gomez 
• Donna Troka 
  
  

Please direct questions about this program to Donna Troka.