Fellows Directory

Niveen AbiGhannam

Dr. Niveen AbiGhannam is a science communication researcher and educator whose work centers around the strategic and inclusive communication of technical knowledge. More specifically, her research seeks to understand individual, organizational, and social factors that can drive or hinder public engagement with STEM behaviors. She also examines the identities of publicly engaged scientists and engineers and the meanings that they associate with their engagement experiences. On the teaching front, Dr. AbiGhannam has taught Engineering Communication at UT since 2015.

Renee Acosta

Renee’ Acosta is a Clinical Professor in the Pharmacy Practice Division and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Renee teaches extensively in the professional PharmD Program. Her primary instruction includes Nonprescription Pharmacotherapeutics and Self-Care I and II, and a UGS courses titled Self-Care and OTC Products. Her PTF project focused on the use of standardized patients in Objective Structured Clinical Exams(OSCEs).

Lucy Atkinson

Matthew Balhoff

Matthew is a professor in the Hildebrand Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering (PGE) Department. Matt’s work as a PTF includes a curriculum-wide design project that is presented to the students in their first petroleum engineering class, taught in the spring of their first year. In every PGE class they are assigned at least one homework assignment or project taken directly from the design project. The objective of this initiative is to use unique methods and tools to develop an integrated and synergistic program.

Tasha Beretvas

Tasha Beretvas is a professor in the Quantitative Methods program in the Department of Educational Psychology. She joined UT's faculty in 2000. Beretvas has served as the Quantitative Methods program chair and the College of Education's Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies. She is currently the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. She is also a member of the board of directors for the college's Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk and a faculty associate of UT's Population Research Center.

Maura Borrego

Matt Bowers

Dr. Matt Bowers is an Associate Professor of Instruction in Sport Management at the University of Texas at Austin. He studies youth development in and through sports and has published research studies related to the impact of sport participation on creativity and the value of sandlot/unstructured sports for children. His work has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Wired, The Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal, SXSW, and the Aspen Institute’s Sport for All, Play For Life: A Playbook to Get Every Kid in the Game.

Keffrelyn Brown

Courtney Byrd

As Founding Director of The University of Texas at Austin Michael and Tami Lang Stuttering Institute, Courtney has unparalleled access to one of the largest and most diverse clinical populations of children and adults who stutter. Given the low incidence nature of this disorder, she feels a profound responsibility to share my unique access to the stuttering community with students, professors, and practicing clinicians across the globe. Her PTF initiative aims to do just that.

Julia Campbell

Dr. Julia Campbell is a clinical audiologist and auditory neuroscientist who specializes in cortical plasticity in auditory disorders such as hearing loss and tinnitus. She serves as the Audiology Graduate Program Director and Audiology Discipline and Training Coordinator for the ACT LEND program. She currently instructs audiology graduate students in clinical training, pediatric audiology, and medical audiology.
 

Robert Carroll

Dr. Robert Carroll is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Moody College of Communication. As a member of the Communication Studies department he teaches the 2nd year college-wide Foundation course and an Honors Service Learning and Community Engagement course. Additionally he works as an MBA+ Communication Coach where he leads interactive workshops on storytelling, leadership principles, and authenticity.

Ashley Castleberry

As an Assistant Dean of Curriculum and Assessment in the Division of Pharmacy Practice in the College of Pharmacy, Dr. Castleberry teaches first- and second-year pharmacy students cardiovascular physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology and coordinates the Pharmacy Practice Lab course. As Division Head of Pharmacy Practice, she leads a team of 20 faculty. She is passionate about assessment, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and faculty development.

Stephanie Cawthon

Wenhong Chen

Dr. Wenhong Chen is a professor of media studies and sociology, the founding co-director of Center for Entertainment and Media Industries, and a Distinguished Scholar in the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin.  

Julia Clarke

Hands-on research experiences for undergraduates offer unique active-learning experiences with real-world questions. These experiences create communities and improve 4-year graduation rates. They may also help create a student body and alumni population that recognize the importance of the research mission of large R1 universities.

Zhengrong Cui

View Rong's profile on his department's site >

Joe Cutbirth

Dr. Cutbirth is an assistant professor of instruction whose work focuses on the transdisciplinary practice of communication in leadership. He teaches in Moody College of Communication and the University Bridging Disciplines Program, where his classes examine the role of trust, deception, and hope in narratives used by leaders and about leadership itself. He was a finalist for the 2024 Moody College Teaching Award. His project is designed to examine the relationship between rigor and accommodation in the post-COVID era.

Natalie Czimskey

Natalie Czimskey, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at The University of Texas where she earned all three of her degrees. She began teaching as a doctoral student in 2012 and continued teaching part time until completing her Ph.D. in 2019 when she joined the faculty full-time.  Her primary research area is adult neurogenic disorders with a special interest in traumatic brain injury, though her passion is teaching; she has taught 9 different courses in the past 2 years.

Patrick Davis

Professor Emeritus of Pharmacy (Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry). Teaches required and elective pharmacy coursework in drug metabolism, infectious diseases, and interprofessional health education. Also teaches a First-Year Signature Course on historical pandemics and their impact on society.

Erin Donovan

Madeleine Holland

Dr. Madeleine Holland is an associate professor of instruction in the Department of Communication Studies, as well as the Moody College’s program manager for interdisciplinary education initiatives. She coordinates partnerships among departments within the College and also with other academic units on campus, at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

Joel Johnson

Joel Johnson is a Second-Year Teaching Fellow and served as the First Year Representative on the PTF Steering Committee in 2019.

Lee Ann Kahlor

Krishna Kumar

Krishna Kumar is an Assistant Professor in the Civil, Architecture, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Krishna’s work involves developing exascale micro and macro-scale numerical methods for modeling natural hazards. Krishna also develops Scientific Machine Learning algorithms: Graph Network Simulators and Differentiable programming to accelerate numerical methods and solve optimization, design, and inverse problems.

Lara Latimer

Dr. Lara Latimer is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in Health Behavior and Health Education at UT. She teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate classes, including Child & Adolescent Health, Theories of Substance Use & Abuse, Theories of Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences, and Foundations of Epidemiology. Lara hopes to learn more about and make an impact on classroom safety practices through her PTF initiative.