Meet our new CTL Graduate Fellows!

We are excited to announce that three graduate students will be joining the CTL team this fall as the CTL Graduate Fellows in educational development. They were selected as a cohort to support and extend our programming and services, particularly those designed for fellow graduate students. They bring a wealth of experience and perspectives from various areas. Further, they have been engaged with the CTL for their own professional development and are reflective of how we can better support all who teach at WashU. We look forward to applying their ideas, contributions, and commitment to enhance our work in educational development.

Zoe Clapacs

Zoe Clapacs (She/Her) is a 5^th year Biomedical Engineering PhD student in the lab of Dr. Jai Rudra. Her laboratory research focuses on designing vaccines targeted to rare leukocyte populations combat West Nile Disease and autoimmune disorders. Her education research developing and evaluating the qualitative and quantitative impact of research-skills courses for incarcerated students taught through the Washington University Prison Education Project has led to several conference talks, panel appearances and peer reviewed articles and was recognized with the departmental outstanding outreach award. Fun Fact: Zoe’s middle name is the same as an experimental technique she uses in the lab.

She served for two years on the Center for Teaching and Learning’s Graduate Student Advisory Board and has participated in the CTL’s professional development in teaching program. Outside of her work, she participates in Queer and anti-carceral activism in St. Louis and likes to garden. She is excited to meet a cohort of graduate students from different fields all interested in educational development, and to collaborate on developing new programming that can help educators even after the fellowship is completed!

Jacqueline Garnett

Jacqueline Garnett is a PhD candidate working in the Evolutionary Morphology Lab in the Department of Anthropology. Her research focuses on how an organism’s evolutionary history constrains future evolutionary potential; she specifically studies the relationship between diet and dental evolution in primates. A fun fact about her is that she spent a summer doing fieldwork with snapping turtles!

She is enrolled in the CTL’s Professional Development in Teaching Program and through that she has attended many incredible workshops. These workshops changed her perspective on teaching and inspired her to learn more, she has been a part of the EPIC Learning Community and this year will be her second year on the CTL’s Graduate Student Advisory Council. She is very excited to be joining as a Graduate Fellow, to see behind the curtain to better understand how this work gets done and most importantly to help provide the resources for the community that have made such an impact on her.

Katherine Tilghman

Katherine Tilghman (she/her) is a PhD student in Hispanic Studies with a certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research focuses on representations of kinship and community in contemporary Latin American fiction by women and gender-minoritized writers.

She is an alumna of the CTL’s EPIC program and is working towards a Teaching Citation in the Professional Development in Teaching Program. Katherine also plays the violin and enjoys attending concerts around St. Louis. As a CTL fellow, she is excited about the opportunity to help plan and facilitate workshops and community-building initiatives.