Education Committee

Weiping Wu is Vice Provost for Academic Programs, and Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP. She served as Interim Dean of the School during spring and summer 2022. Professor Wu is also on the faculty of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia Population Research Center. Before joining Columbia in 2016, she was Professor and Chair in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.

Trained in architecture and urban planning, Professor Wu has focused her research and teaching on understanding urban dynamics in developing countries in general and China in particular. She is an internationally acclaimed urban and planning scholar working on global urbanization with a specific expertise in issues of migration, housing, and infrastructure of Chinese cities. Her publications include nine books, as well as many articles in top international journals. Her published work has gained an increasing public presence, particularly her book The Chinese City (now in second edition). It offers a critical understanding of China’s urbanization, exploring how the complexity of Chinese cities both conforms to and defies conventional urban theories and experience of cities elsewhere around the world. Her most recent book is China Urbanizing: Impacts and Transitions, gathering an interdisciplinary group of scholars to capture the phenomenon of urbanization in its historical and regional variations, and explores its impact on the country’s socioeconomic welfare, environment and resources, urban form and lifestyle, and population and health. It also provides new perspectives to understand the transitions underway and the gravity of the progress, particularly in the context of demographic shifts and climate change.

Professor Wu has had a number of academic leadership roles beyond the university setting. Currently, she is on the Planning Accreditation Board (PAB), which accredits university programs in North America leading to bachelor’s and master’s degrees in urban and regional planning. She was the President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) in 2017-2019, a consortium of university-based programs offering credentials in urban and regional planning, with more than 100 full-member schools in North America. Between 2008 and 2012, she was an editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, ACSP’s flagship journal. She has been a member of the International Advisory Board for the Urban China Research Network and a member of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Humanities and Social Sciences panel, as well as serving on the editorial board of four journals. She is an editor of the SAGE Handbooks of Modern China series. In addition, she has provided consultation to the Ford Foundation, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and World Bank.

Sen. Ulrich Hengst, PhD, is Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology (in the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain) and Vice Chair for Research and Training in his department. His research focuses on the cell biology of neurodegeneration and neuronal resilience. Dr. Hengst holds a PhD from the University of Basel (Switzerland) and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Bochum (Germany).

Sen. Stuart Firestein is Professor of Neuroscience at in the Department of Biological Sciences.  His research focuses on the vertebrate olfactory system, perhaps the best chemical detector on the planet.  He completed his Ph.D. in neurobiology at the University of California at Berkeley in 1987 and was a post doctoral fellow at Yale University Medical School. In 1991 he joined the faculty at Columbia, becoming a  full professor in 1998.  His laboratory has received continuous funding from NIH and private foundations for the past 25 years.

Dedicated to promoting the accessibility of science to a public audience Firestein serves as an advisor for the A. P. Sloan Foundation’s program for the Public Understanding of Science. In 2011, he received the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. He is a AAAS Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.  He recently joined the Santa Fe Institute as a member of the (visiting) Fractal Faculty.  At Columbia he is on the advisory boards of the Center for Science and Society (CSS) and the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience – both centers for interdisciplinary work between the sciences and the humanities – and the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination at the Paris Global Center. His book on the workings of science for a general audience called Ignorance, How it Drives Science was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. His second book, Failure: Why Science is So Successful, appeared in October 2015. They have been translated into 12 languages and remain in print.

He has lectured extensively in university and public venues, nationally and internationally including a TED talk in 2013 that has accumulated over 3 million views. He speaks regularly for primary school educators and students on the place of science in modern culture and the often forgotten values of ignorance, failure and uncertainty. 



 

Sen. Sean Eren is an M.Arch candidate at Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP). Before coming to Columbia, he received his BFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing at the Rhode Island School of Design, and then worked for two years in New York City as a design engineer for David Yurman. Sean is particularly interested in strengthening student power within Columbia's decision-making processes and in pursuing popular student demands on university functions, transparency, and institutional ethics within one of the few remaining democratic campus structures.

Sen. Nicole B. Wallack, PhD, is the Director of the Undergraduate Writing Program (UWP) and Senior Lecturer in Discipline in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, which she joined in 2003. She co-chaired the Lecturers Study Committee, which created the report on the status of lecturers for the Faculty of Arts & Sciences in 2018. She was the inaugural chair of the Lecturers Advisory Committee in 2020. Until summer 2025, she served as the first lecturer elected to the PPC. In each of her roles, she has advocated for non-tenure eligible faculty has encouraged their full participation in faculty governance in their home departments and across schools and campuses at Columbia. She has served previously on the Committee on the Status of Women and the Faculty Affairs Committee of the Senate as a non-tenure-eligible representative for the Humanities. Her research and teaching interests are in the fields of essay studies, writing studies, composition and rhetoric, the impact of AI on writing programs, American literature, and teacher education. In fall, 2025, she was elected to Co-chair the NTTOT caucus and served on the Executive Committee of the Senate.

Sen. Nasser Odetallah is an MFA student in Film at the Columbia School of the Arts. Originally from Oklahoma, he holds a bachelor’s degree from Columbia School of General Studies (’25), studying English, film & media studies, and Mediterranean studies, and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University (’20), studying chemistry and molecular biophysics & biochemistry. 

While at Yale and General Studies, Nasser served in many leadership roles, supporting students and representing student interests to staff, administration, and faculty, most notably serving as Columbia General Studies Student Body President during the 2023-2024 academic year. Nasser is primarily interested in strengthening the voice of and engagement with students on central university issues including freedom of speech and academic freedom; financial support for students; campus access and space; expansion of key student services such as dining, health services, housing, and study spaces; and accountability from faculty and administrators in repairing institutional trust and integrity. Coming from Palestinian-American, Puerto Rican, LGBTQ+, and first-generation, low-income (FGLI) backgrounds, Nasser has experience working across student populations and interests to effect positive and long-lasting change at the university-level. Nasser looks forward to working with the other students on the University Senate to create positive change and continue to add the student voice on critical university-wide issues.

Sen. Melanie M. Wall is Professor of Biostatistics in Psychiatry at VP&S, where she directs Mental Health Data Science and collaborates widely on NIH-funded clinical, public health, and mental health research. She has spent her career helping investigators ask clear questions, evaluate evidence carefully, and make decisions under uncertainty—skills she believes are needed in university governance. Over the past two years, Sen. Wall has also become more actively involved in Columbia-wide advocacy, including through CU Stands Up. That work has deepened her commitment to academic freedom, shared governance, protection of students and scholars, and a university culture in which disagreement is not treated as disloyalty. As a faculty senator, she is willing to engage with difficult questions directly, listen across schools and constituencies, and insist on transparency, due process, and principled decision-making. As a biostatistician, teacher, mentor, and faculty colleague, Sen. Wall brings both analytical rigor and a strong commitment to the academic community they are trying to preserve and rebuild.

Sen. Mark Hansen is a professor at Columbia Journalism School and founding director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. He has collaborated on numerous art installations that present complex data to the public. His work with Ben Rubin, Jer Thorp, and The Office for Creative Research has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the London Science Museum, and the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. Hansen’s journalism teaching and practice also center on data and computation. His 2017 course at Columbia contributed original reporting to The New York Times project The Follower Factory, which exposed the bot economy behind the sale of fake followers on Twitter—work recognized with a George Polk Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist citation. In the last year, he has also collaborated on New York Times investigations into deficiencies in the U.S. organ transplant system. Hansen holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published over 60 papers and holds eight patents in data science, statistics, and computer science.

Sen. Madeleine Gordon (she/her) is a biomedical engineering Ph.D. student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Madeleine is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, and earned her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology before continuing her research career at Emory University. At Columbia, she has served as the Community Engagement Chair on the Engineering Graduate Student Council. Madeleine’s research interests include intervertebral disc degeneration, drug delivery, and orthopedic biology.

Lydia Goehr is Fred and Fannie Mack Professor of Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. She is currently chair of the Department of Philosophy.

Her university awards include: Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award (2009/2010); The Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC)'s Faculty Mentoring Award (FMA) (2007/8), and Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching (2005).

She is a recipient of Mellon, Getty, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and in 1997 was the Visiting Ernest Bloch Professor in the Music Department at the University of California at Berkeley, where she gave a series of lectures on Richard Wagner. In 2024 and 2025, she was a Visiting Professor at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 2022-23, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute (Empirical Aesthetics) in Frankfurt and taught at the Courtauld Institute, London. in 2020, she was a Mellon fellow at the Tate Museum in London and, in 2019, a Visiting Professor at the University of Torino. In 2008, she was Visiting Professor at the Freie Universität, Berlin (Cluster: "The Language of Emotions") and, in 2009, for the FU-Berlin SFB Theater und Fest. In 2005-6, she delivered the Royal Holloway-British Library Lectures in Musicology in London and the Wort Lectures at Cambridge University.  In 2002-3, she was the Aby Warburg Professor in Hamburg and 2000-2001, Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. She has been a Trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics and is a member of the New York Institute of the Humanities. In 2012, she was awarded the H. Colin Slim Award by the American Musicological Society for an article on Wagner's Die Meistersinger.

Lydia Goehr is the author of The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (1992/2007 with a new essay); The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy [essays on Richard Wagner] (1998); Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory (2008, essays on Adorno and Danto); Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread. A Philosophical Detective Story (2021); David Lean (Filmmaker and Philosopher) (2025). Her current projects include Furniture-Art: Essays on Objects and Objections; and Violin Lessons: Notes toward a Philosophy of Practice.  She is co-editor with Daniel Herwitz of The Don Giovanni Moment. Essays on the legacy of an Opera (2006), and co-editor with Jonathan Gilmore of Blackwell's A Companion to Arthur C. Danto (2022). With Gregg Horowitz, she is series editor of Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts, Columbia University Press. 

Sen. Letty Moss-Salentijn is Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dentistry (in Anatomy and Cell Biology). On the University Senate, Dr. Moss-Salentijn serves on the Education and Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom and Tenure committees. Dr. Moss-Salentijn’s research has focused primarily on aspects of growth and development of skeletal and dental tissues. Much of her work was done in collaboration with her late husband Professor Melvin L. Moss and colleagues in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics. More recently, especially during the pandemic, she has worked with members of CTL, CUIT, and the Computer Science Department to assist her faculty colleagues in the use of new media applications to enrich online teaching. 

Sen. Katherine R. Brown is a third-year student at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science studying biomedical engineering with a focus on neural engineering. Katherine is drawn to work that sits at the intersection of engineering, health, and innovation. She works as an apprentice in the Advanced Instrumentation Lab at the Zuckerman Institute, contributing to the development of novel neuroscience research instrumentation, and holds an AAUW scholarship. At Columbia, Katherine supports the Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship team at Columbia Engineering through student-focused entrepreneurship events and the NSF I-Corps Regional Program. She also serves as an organizing committee leader in the Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs. Through the University Senate, Katherine aims to advocate for SEAS undergraduates on issues of curriculum, student research access, and campus welfare. She is committed to expanding opportunities for students to connect with mentors, advisors, and professionals outside the university, recognizing that meaningful external networks are essential to student development.

Sen. Jeffrey Wayno is a historian of the European Middle Ages who works as a subject librarian and rare book curator in the Columbia University Libraries. As the Collection Services Librarian at The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, he is responsible for both Burke's general and rare collections, as well as the ancient, medieval, and religious studies collections at Butler Library. An alumnus of Columbia's doctoral program in medieval history, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the University Libraries before taking up his current position in 2018. He also regularly teaches Literature Humanities in Columbia College's Core Curriculum.
Jeffrey serves as co-chair of the University Senate's Libraries and Digital Resources Committee and as a member of the Education Committee.

Sen. Gareth Williams is a professor of Classics who has taught at Columbia since 1992. Since then, Sen. Williams has served on many different Arts & Sciences committees and in the College Core Curriculum. Sen. Williams is a specialist in the Latin language and literature of the late Republican and early Imperial eras, and has written various books on the Roman poet Ovid and on the philosopher-politician Seneca, but also on Renaissance Venice and Venetian humanism.

Sen. Carlos V. Cruz ’88CC was raised in the Marcy Avenue projects in Brooklyn and in South Texas by immigrants from Panama and Mexico and learned the beauty of bringing diverse people together and the power of community, an outlook that he put into practice in his vast extracurricular involvement at Columbia.  As multi-year President of Columbia Pride, and Vice President, Development, and Communications Chairs of the Latino Alumni Association, sometimes simultaneously, he takes great pride in helping amplify and support everyone in the Columbia community.  In his many interactions with Columbians, he is always inspired by our ideas, accomplishments, and character.  After a few great years working with the wonderful team at Columbia Undergraduate Admissions right after graduation with a concentration in Economics, Carlos embarked on a career in supply chain, product development, sourcing, and merchandising where he has risen to positions of leadership at Gap, Inc. and Target, helped structure startups, and consulted. Carlos currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Columbia College Alumni Association and the 1754 Society and the Columbia Alumni Association Board.

Sen. Babi Kruchin has been teaching at the American Language Program (ALP) since 1999. Kruchin teaches academic courses from beginners to advanced and specializes in teaching academic writing for international students and academic skills for graduate students. She has trained ESL teachers on both campus and online courses in Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She has presented in various TESOL conferences and organizes teacher development events for NYS TESOL. Among other publications, she has contributed to Teacher Development Interactive, Pearson. Her interests lie in teacher education, teaching academic writing, and the effective use of technology in the classroom.

Sen. Alan Yang is a Senior Lecturer in Discipline at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). He teaches the core Quantitative Analysis I & II sequence (introductory statistics and econometrics) and Quantitative Methods in Program Evaluation (applied econometric methods for causal inference) at SIPA.

His research interests include public opinion and political behavior, research methods and statistics, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality studies. His research has appeared in edited volumes and journals such as Political Science Quarterly, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Social Science Quarterly. His book, Americanizing Latino Politics, Latinoizing American Politics (with Rodolfo de la Garza), was published in 2020 (New York and London: Routledge). He has done statistical consulting work for non-profit, NGO, and academic organizations. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at Columbia University.