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. Varna Vasudevan is an MBA student at Columbia Business School, where she focuses on social enterprise, innovation, and early-stage venture capital. Originally from Northern California, she studied Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, where countless hours spent prototyping in the campus makerspace sparked a career at the intersection of design, technology, and business. Sen. Vasudevan began her career in product strategy and user experience design at Ford, Lyft, and creative agency Instrument - helping imagine autonomous vehicle concepts, launch CitiBike and multimodal transit products, and lead design for the reimagined Oura App and Fortnite’s first loyalty program. At Columbia, she serves as a VP of Education for the Venture Capital Club, VP of Admissions for Columbia Women in Business, a Nonprofit Board Leadership Fellow, and an Orientation Leader for the Class of '27. She’s currently an MBA Associate at Female Founders Fund, supporting early-stage VC investments across healthcare, deep tech, and consumer sectors. Varna hopes to bring a creative, cross-disciplinary perspective to the University Senate - drawing on the open-minded, collaborative spirit of her alma mater and previous organizations to strengthen connection across Columbia’s diverse schools. In her free time, she loves exploring new matcha cafes, hip-hop dancing, traveling (country #37 this year!), and tinkering in the campus woodshop!

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. 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. Sarah Hansen is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry. Since joining Columbia in 2004 she has taught introductory chemistry lecture/laboratory courses and supports pedagogical development through graduate seminars and workshops. Her aim is to foster a collaborative approach to learning, shifting the teacher into the role of facilitating meaningful engagement between students while decreasing the distance between chemistry in and out of the classroom. Dr Hansen was the 2024 recipient of the Division of Natural Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence.

Her research focuses on reflection, visual engagement, and laboratory learning. She co-edited Eye-tracking for the Chemistry Education Researcher (2019) and serves on the advisory committee for Columbia’s Science of Learning Research Initiative.

From 2020-2023 she served on the Lecturer Advisory Council from 2020-2023, chairing for two years. Through advocacy and committee work she actively seeks opportunities to ensure the unique and vital perspectives of untenured faculty at the University are included in Governance and Policy decisions.

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.

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. 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.

Joseph C. Ulichny earned his B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Scranton, graduating from their Honors Program magna cum laude. While at the University of Scranton, he was dually advised by Professor Josephine M. Dunn and Professor Trudy A. Dickneider, working on an interdisciplinary thesis project in art history and chemistry. He then earned his M.A in Chemistry from Columbia University, working under the direction of Professor Gerard Parkin. In 2008, he became an Associate in Chemistry at Columbia University under the mentorship of Professor James J. Valentini, former Dean of Columbia College. He was given the Excellence in Chemistry Award from the University of Scranton, as well as the Jack Miller Teaching Award from Columbia University. While in graduate school, he worked on synthetic and structural inorganic projects in the Parkin Lab. Joseph became the General Chemistry Course Coordinator during the Spring 2010 semester. In addition to chemistry, his interests are art history, art restoration and conservation, as well as the theatre.

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.

James H. Applegate is Professor of Astronomy. 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.

Sen. Huda Paracha (BC ‘26) is a rising senior at Barnard College, majoring in religion, with a focus on Islam, and on the pre-medical track. As a first-generation, low-income student from Queens, New York, Huda empathizes and stands with her peers as the student body fights to make their voices heard. She is proud to serve on the University Senate and advocate on behalf of Barnard’s diverse student population, and the wider Columbia University and Harlem community. In addition to serving as University Senator for Barnard College, Huda works to give back to her community, spending her time volunteering at Mount Sinai’s Oncology Center for the American Cancer Society. On the University Senate, Huda co-chairs the Student Affairs Committee, and serves on the Executive and Education committees. 

Sen. Emanuel Clemente (he/him/his) is a Master of Public Health student at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, concentrating in sociomedical sciences. A graduate of the University of Miami with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Political Science, Emanuel’s work and academic interests lie at the intersections of medicine, law, and community health. Originally from South Florida and from a Puerto Rican family, Emanuel’s perspective is shaped by his experiences navigating social and structural inequities in health and education. He values organization, transparency, and collaboration as essential tools for effective advocacy and student representation. His background in community outreach, health education, and civic mobilization reflects his commitment to transforming the structures that influence population health outcomes through any role he assumes. 

Joining the University Senate during a pivotal moment in the University’s history, Emanuel is dedicated to representing student voices with transparency, empathy, and integrity. He aims to strengthen the relationship between Columbia’s Morningside and CUIMC campuses, deepen the University’s engagement with the surrounding New York City community, and foster an inclusive academic environment that promotes student wellness, interdisciplinary collaboration, and public service. Emanuel believes in building a public health community that not only studies inequity but actively works to dismantle it.

Sen. Eli Baum is a senior from Brooklyn, NY. He studies math and English at Columbia College. Currently, he is an editor at The Blue and White Magazine, where he has written and edited articles about campus and local politics. In his free time he likes to play board games and read.

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. 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.