Fellows Directory

Pauline Strong

Dr. Pauline Strong is a Professor of Anthropology and served as director of the Humanities Institute and its Difficult Dialogues Program from 2009 until 2022. She is also affiliated with American Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the undergraduate Bridging Disciplines Program. Her research focuses on representations and self-representations of Indigenous people in the US, dialogic pedagogy, higher education policy, and academic freedom.

Jenna Summerlin

Jenna Summerlin is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Pharmacy Practice Division in the College of Pharmacy. Jenna is a pediatric clinical pharmacy specialist in internal medicine and has a practice site at Dell Children’s Medical Center. Her teaching at the college includes experiential education for fourth-year pharmacy students, small group facilitation throughout the curriculum, and didactic teaching in the Pharmacotherapy and Foundations of Professional Development series.

Danica Sumpter

Jeremi Suri

Michael Sury

Michael Sury, an Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Finance, specializes in analytic finance and machine learning, capital markets, and valuation. Additionally, he serves as the Managing Director of the McCombs Center for Analytics and Transformative Technologies and oversees the Financial Analytics track within the MS in Business Analytics program.

Katie Tackett

Katie is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Special Education, where she also serves as the Undergraduate Advisor. Her PTF project is aimed at building community and communication throughout a Special Education major's time on the Forty Acres.

Carole Taxis

Check out this page on the School of Nursing website for a video interview with PTF alum Carole Taxis about her teaching philosophy, or view the video below.

Nina Telang

Nina Telang is a Professor of Instruction in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and a Kilby Faculty Fellow. She is passionate about student success and well-being and has implemented student success programs in her first and second-year courses.

Sean Theriault

Project Title: COLA’s Teaching Mentor Program 

Ann Thijs

Ann, originally from Belgium, earned graduate degrees in both engineering and ecology. She is deeply committed to undergraduate education and enjoys teaching students about the interconnectedness of the natural world, emphasizing evolutionary and ecological perspectives. Her goal is to help students develop critical thinking and quantitative skills, evident in her courses in introductory biology and upper division ecology. 


 

Heidi Toprac

Heidi is a Professor of Instruction in the Department of Finance and the Director of the Undergraduate Internship Program for McCombs. She is a recent recipient of The Texas Ten award, in recognition of the positive impact her teaching has had on the lives of her students. Her PTF project focused on enhancing personal financial literacy among students of all majors at UT.

Carlos Torres-Verdín

Carlos Torres-Verdín received a M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. degree in Engineering Geoscience from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991. During 1991-1997, he held the position of Research Scientist with Schlumberger-Doll Research. From 1997-1999, he was Reservoir Specialist and Technology Champion with YPF (Buenos Aires, Argentina).

Jessica Toste

Dr. Jessica Toste is an Associate Professor in the Department of Special Education at The University of Texas at Austin. She has research affiliations with the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk and the Texas Center for Equity Promotion. Toste was the Chair of Provost’s Teaching Fellow in 2022-2023.

Clint Tuttle

Clint has seen that many students lack the tools and techniques to define their own personal path to success and lack confidence in making decisions about their futures. They seek a “safe path” rather than the one that aligns to their own passions. Every teacher at some point has taught a disengaged student who was more concerned about the grade than the learning. A student who knows why they’re in pursuit of certain knowledge can be more engaged and learn better.

David Vanden Bout

Project Title: Data Drive Course Design: Differentiation of Chemistry Concept Retention between Standard and Hybrid Courses. 

Anita Vangelisti

Anita Vangelisti is a professor and Senior Associate Dean in the Moody College of Communication. Her research focuses on the associations between communication and emotion in the context of close, personal relationships. She holds the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in Communication, received the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award and the College of Communication Teaching Excellence Award, and is a fellow of several academic associations.

 

Steven Vokes

Louis Waldman

Louis Alexander Waldman is an Associate Professor in Art and Art History (College of Fine Arts) with a joint appointment in French and Italian (Liberal Arts). Previously Louis worked in Florence, Italy, as Assistant Director of the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti.

Di Wang

Dr. Di "Wendy" Wang is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the International Relations and Global Studies (IRG) program. She teaches courses in international political economy, globalization, and capstone research. She has been the faculty director of a widely successful study abroad program in Singapore and Vietnam. Her research focuses on sovereign wealth funds and politics of foreign direct divestment.

Michael Webber

Nick Winges-Yanez

Dr. Nick is a clinical assistant professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work leading the Disability Studies program. She is a queer crip feminist activist-scholar interested in critical discourse analysis and how language, signs, and symbols create and perpetuate our realities. Her work also interrogates histories of disability in relation to sexuality, citizenship, and trauma. She is deeply dedicated to teaching and expanding and growing her practice of compassionate and inclusive pedagogy.

Veronica Young

Kristina Zvinakis