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

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.