Education Committee

Sen. Wena Teng (CC’25) is a Senior at Columbia College, studying race/ethnicity studies and history with a specialization in political economy on the pre-law track. In the University Senate, she serves on the Student Affairs Committee, Education Committee, and the Commission on Diversity.

Born and raised in Queens New York, and attending Columbia as a proud First-Generation student, Wena understands the importance of community relations, financial security, housing, labor rights, and more. She is excited to take these experiences to the University Senate, with a focus on continuing to grow student life on campus and in our city through improvements in diversity, student affairs, labor justice, financial accessibility, and community solidarity.

As a Laidlaw Scholar, Truman Scholar (NY), and legal research assistant, Wena is dedicated to studying and building a career in immigration and labor law. Her experiences drive her political and legal advocacy to build inclusive and multilateral institutions for migration labor and diasporic communities. Educated in New York City Public Schools, she has served as a director of the educational equity nonprofit IntegrateNYC and has been involved in local elections. Her dedication to labor and immigration rights has been nourished by her experiences as a White House Intern and organizer with the Urban Justice Center. 

Outside of the University Senate, Wena served as Co-President of the Asian American Alliance, Director of the Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice Team of the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review, and a member of the Columbia Pops Orchestra and the Housing Equity Project. Though Wena is on the pre-law track, she is also a fan of tea culture, and literature, plays the Chinese harp (guzheng), and might just open a bookstore/teahouse one day. 

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 Associate Vice Chair for Research and Training in his department. His research focuses on the cell biology of neurodegeneration and neuronal resilience. He is co-director of a training grant for advanced neuroscience graduate students and of a post-baccalaureate program for students from institutions that do not provide significant research experiences. Dr. Hengst holds a PhD from the University of Basel (Switzerland) and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Bochum (Germany).

Sen. Tiffany Bryant has held a number of roles in government, including working for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the State of New York.  She currently works as a political consultant. She is the Chair of Columbia College Women and on the board of the Columbia Alumni Association. Previously Sen. Bryant served as the Vice President of Columbia's Black Alumni Council. She received her Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Columbia College in 2008.

Sen. Sonya Dyhrman is Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, with a Senior Staff affiliation at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. On the University Senate, Dr. Dyhrman represents the Natural Sciences Division of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and serves on the Education Committee. 

Dr. Dyhrman She received her Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and was a tenured scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution prior to coming to Columbia in 2013. Her research focuses on marine microbial ecology and biogeochemistry in a changing ocean, and she teaches classes in ecosystems, oceanography, and science communication.

Sen. Shelley A. Saltzman is Senior Lecturer in Languages in the School of Professional Studies’ American Language Program, where she has served as Associate Director for Partnerships since 2010. On the University Senate, Dr. Saltzman serves on the Executive and Education committees, and co-chairs the Tenure-Track and Off-Track Faculty Caucus.

Specializing in English for Specific Purposes, Dr. Saltzman has designed courses for several Columbia schools, including Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, General Studies, International and Public Affairs, Law, and Professional Studies. Dr. Saltzman has served on various University-wide committees including the Lecturer Advisory Committee, the Lecturer Review Guidelines Revision Committee, and the Standing Committee on Language Lecturers.  She has done work for the New York Review of Books, Susan Sontag, ETS, College Board, and IELTS USA, among others.A frequent presenter at campus, national, and international conferences, Dr. Saltzman has been awarded the international Global Legal Skills Award (2015); a Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award (2018), and the School of Professional Studies’ Team Impact Award (2022).

Sen. Ruth DeFries is a professor of ecology and sustainable development at Columbia University in New York. She uses images from satellites and field surveys to examine how the world’s demands for food and other resources are changing land use throughout the tropics. Her research quantifies how these land use changes affect climate, biodiversity and other ecosystem services, as well as human development. She has also developed innovate education programs in sustainable development. DeFries was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, one of the country’s highest scientific honors, received a MacArthur “genius” award, and is the recipient of many other honors for her scientific research. In addition to over 100 scientific papers, she is committed to communicating the nuances and complexities of sustainable development to popular audiences, most recently through her book “The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis.” DeFries is committed to linking science with policy, for example through her involvement with the Environmental Defense Fund, Science for Nature and People, World Wildlife Fund, and reconciling conservation and development in central India.

Sen. Oren Pizmony-Levy is an Associate Professor in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a BA in political science and MA in sociology of education from Tel Aviv University, and a PhD in sociology and comparative and international education from Indiana University-Bloomington. Pizmony-Levy is the Founding Director of the Center for Sustainable Futures and is an affiliated faculty at the Columbia Climate School. His research and teaching focus on the intersection between education and social movements, including test-based accountability and international large-scale assessments (e.g., TIMSS and PISA), LGBTQ+ education, and environmental sustainability education. His current projects revolve around exploring how educators engage with climate change education and examining the international landscape of organizations that are actively involved in climate education and communication.

Sen. Matthew Beck is a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science SEAS studying 2-D materials. Matthew is from Monmouth County, New Jersey, and earned a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rowan University. At Rowan University, Matthew served in several university leadership roles, including Student Government Association (SGA) President and Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs. Matthew also has several years of industry experience working at Lockheed Martin in advanced electronic packaging. While at Columbia, Matthew has served as a department representative for the Engineering Graduate Student Council and as Ph.D. Career Chair for the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Association.

Sen. Letty Moss-Salentijn is Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dentistry (in Anatomy and Cell Biology) and Vice Dean for Curriculum Innovation and Interprofessional Education in the College of Dental Medicine. On the University Senate, Dr. Moss-Salentijn serves on the Executive Committee and chairs the Tenured Faculty Caucus. She also co-chairs the Education Committee and the Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom, and Tenure Committee. 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. Julie Crawford, Mark Van Doren Professor of Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, has been teaching at Columbia for almost 25 years. She earned her BA from McGill University and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in the literature and culture of early modern England, with additional expertise in the history of reading, the history of sexuality, and feminist political thought. She has served as the Chair of Literature Humanities and the Committee on the Core (2014-2018), as well as on the COI, the EPPC (where she chaired a Subcommittee on Adjunct Labor in 2018-2020), as a DUS in both IWGS (now ISSG) and English, and as a director of the MA program in English and Comparative Literature. A strong advocate for faculty governance and due process, she would welcome the opportunity to serve in the principal representative university body dedicated to those aims.

Sen. Jonathan Glover is the James L. Dohr Professor of Accounting and Chair of the Accounting Division at Columbia Business School. His research interests include financial and managerial accounting, public policy, accounting history, information economics, mechanism design, incentive theory, and relational contracts. The topics he has worked on include earnings management, accounting conservatism, financial accounting standard setting and regulation, corporate governance, information system design, performance measurement, and managerial compensation. He has published more than 50 research papers in leading journals in accounting, economics, and related fields.

Before joining Columbia, Jonathan was on the faculty of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University from 1992-2015, where he taught a variety of MBA courses on financial and managerial accounting and a PhD course on accounting and information economics. He served as Head of the Ph.D. Program at Tepper from 2008-2011. He also held visiting positions at U.C. Berkeley in the spring of 2000 and at Columbia during 2014-2015. Professor Glover was an academic fellow in the Office of the Chief Accountant at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2004-2005.

Professor Glover is the incoming managing editor of Foundations and Trends in Accounting, an outgoing editor of The Accounting Review, has been an associate editor of Management Science, and serves or has served on the editorial boards of the The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, and the Review of Accounting Studies. 

Jonathan graduated from the Accounting Honors Program at The Ohio State University in 1988 and from Ohio State’s PhD Program in Accounting in 1992. Ohio State’s Omicron Chapter of Beta Alpha Psi awarded him their Alumnus of the Year Award in 2016.

Sen. Jeffrey Wayno is a historian of the European Middle Ages who works as a librarian and 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.

Sen. James H. Applegate is Professor of Astronomy. On the University Senate, Dr. Applegate serves on the Executive Committee, co-chairs the Education Committee, and serves on the Faculty Affairs, Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee.  Dr. Applegate received his B.S. in astrophysics from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. in physics from SUNY at Stony Brook. He was a Bantrell Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, and a previous chair of the Astronomy Department at Columbia.

Amanda Irvin (she/her) serves as Executive Director of the CTL. In this role, she provides the academic vision and strategic leadership for the CTL, advancing the culture of teaching on Columbia’s campuses. She works closely with the Senior Vice Provost, Columbia’s schools and colleges, and faculty leaders to determine priorities for the CTL and develop new initiatives and programs.

Amanda has been with the Columbia CTL since 2016, most recently having served as Senior Director of Faculty Programs and Services. In her roles, she has managed the development and implementation of numerous programs to support pedagogical innovation, purposeful use of educational technology, and learner-centered teaching for faculty and instructors across Columbia.

Recognized as a national expert in educational development, and specializing in inclusive teaching, collaborative learning, and active learning, Amanda has led the production of many resources and programs to support inclusive and anti-racist teaching at Columbia. She has contributed a range of articles in teaching and learning publications, joining with other CTL colleagues to lead conversations on topics such as disembroiling HOT moments in the classroom, supporting department chairs in centering inclusive teaching, and designing online and in-person learning to be more inclusive. She often works with other institutions to join  national and international conversations about teaching through change—supporting faculty and centering learning as the world, institutions, and technological advancements change around us. She also serves as an Associate Editor for College Teaching, and volunteers her time on the faculty for the Institute for New Educational Developers, where she engages and mentors a new generation of Center for Teaching and Learning professionals.

Prior to joining the Columbia CTL, Amanda served as Assistant Director of Faculty Development of the Koehler Center for Teaching Excellence at Texas Christian University where she was also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of English. Amanda holds a Ph.D. in English and a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from Texas Christian University, an M.A. in English from Radford University, and a B.A. in English from the University of Central Florida. In addition to being a certified Team-Based Learning Collaborative expert consultant-trainer, she is also trained in Bystander Intervention to prevent sexual assault on college campuses as well as Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) Gatekeeper training to prevent student self-harm. 

Amanda is a first-generation college graduate and member of the LGBTQ+ community. In her spare time, Amanda enjoys reading, writing, practicing yoga, and cooking.

Sen. Alan Yang is a Senior Lecturer in Discipline at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). On the University Senate, he serves on the Education Committee. 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.

Sen. Adam Cannon is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science. On the University Senate, Dr. Cannon serves on the Education and IT committees.

Dr. Cannon joined Columbia in July, 2000. From 2000 to 2005 he was also a visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Cannon came to Columbia after earning a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Cannon’s current research interests are in computer science education, machine learning, and statistical pattern recognition. He is a winner of the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, The Society of Columbia Graduates Great Teacher Award, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science Alumni Association’s Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award.