Poorvu Center Faculty Fellows

Mayur M. Desai, PhD, MPH, is a Professor of Epidemiology and the inaugural Associate Dean for Community and Practice at the Yale School of Public Health. During his time as a Poorvu Faculty Fellow, Dr. Desai presented the syllabus checklist he created in collaboration with others at YSPH. The checklist is designed to help instructors identify strengths and areas of improvement regarding student-centered teaching practices and how they presented on the syllabus. You can access the checklist below.

Professor Desai received both his MPH in health policy and his PhD in epidemiology from Yale. He then served for two years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, before returning to New Haven to join the Yale faculty.

Syllabus Review Tool to Support Excellence in Teaching 

Roderick A. Ferguson is a professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He authored One-Dimensional Queer (2019), We Demand (2017), The Reorder of Things (2012), and Aberrations in Black (2004). He co-edited Strange Affinities (2011) and Keywords of African American Studies (2018). Currently, he is working on The Arts of Black Studies and The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora. His teaching interests include cultural politics, feminism, race studies, critical university studies, queer movements, and social theory.

Jennifer McIntosh, PhD, RN, CNE, PMH-BC, NEA-BC, is a lecturer in the Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing (GEPN) and Master of Science in Nursing programs. Prior to joining Yale School of Nursing, Dr. McIntosh taught at several universities and held progressive leadership positions in the emergency department and behavioral health settings, with the most recent position as the Director of Patient Care Services for a large health system in New York. Dr. McIntosh’s experiences have sparked a passion for scholarly inquiry on the nursing care of individuals living with mental illness. 

 Jennifer will be continuing her work by offering workshops in the 2025-2026 academic year related to instructor well-being. 

Charles Bailyn is the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of Astronomy and Physics.  He graduated from Yale College in 1981 and returned to Yale as a faculty member in 1990, where he has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and as Chair of the Astronomy Department.  His research focuses on observations of compact celestial objects; he shared the 2009 Bruno Rossi prize from the American Astronomical Society for his work on mass measurements of galactic black holes.  During his time at Yale, he has created six new undergraduate courses, several of which are now taught by colleagues, and was awarded the Dylan Hixon Prize for teaching excellence in the natural sciences.  He was the inaugural Dean of Faculty at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, where he was a leader in developing and delivering a ten-course Common Curriculum taken by all students.  After he returned to Yale from Singapore, he served for six years as Head of College of the newly created Benjamin Franklin College. 

During his time as a Faculty Fellow, Professor Bailyn focused on workshops related to supporting student mental health accommodations in the classroom and created a handout with helpful recommendations and Yale-specific resources.

Daniel Martinez HoSang is Professor of American Studies and holds a secondary appointment in Political Science. He also serves on the Education Studies Advisory Committee. HoSang has previously collaborated with the Poorvu Center as a faculty partner in the Pedagogical Partners program and as a panelist on several sessions on anti-racist and inclusive teaching. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six books in ethnic studies, racial politics, and social movements. His recent work has focused on legacies and impacts of racism in the academic disciplines, including the long history (link is external) of Eugenics advocacy and research in science, medicine and the university. Through the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute(link is external), he has taught seminars for K-12 public school teachers on Anti-racist Curriculum and Pedagogy, and works with teachers and youth organizing groups in Connecticut on teaching about racism and racial justice in the K-12 curriculum through the Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective(link is external) and the Yale Education Studies partner teachers program. 

During his time as a Faculty Fellow, Professor Hosang facilitated discussions on how to confront Yale’s history with eugenics in the classroom(link is external). He and his students also created a short video that discusses the history of eugenics at the institution and the work of the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale (AECY).

Claire Bowern is a Professor of Linguistics and the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Linguistics department. Professor Bowern graduated from Harvard in 2004 with a PhD in Linguistics. As a historical linguist, her research is centered around language change and language documentation in Indigenous Australia. While her work touches many areas, the overarching question she explores is how to characterize the nature of language change. As a Yale instructor, Professor Bowern is very dedicated to teaching. Students of her LING 110: Introduction to Linguistics course describe her as “supportive, passionate, and knowledgeable” while providing “a great foundation and introduction to Linguistics.” Professor Bowern has worked extensively with the Poorvu Center as a past member of the center’s advisory board, faculty partner in the Pedagogical Partners program, featured panelist at Course (Re)Design, and participant in many other workshops and sessions. Bowern also directed Yale’s Women Faculty Forum, a gender equity group on campus, from 2017-2020, and has secondary appointments in Anthropology, Cognitive Science, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. 

During her time as a Faculty Fellow, Professor Bowern facilitated many different workshops on the topic of linguistic justice and created an infographic depicting The Many Languages of Yale College.

Enrique M. De La Cruz is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry (MB&B) and the Head of Branford College. He is a first-generation Cuban-American from Newark, NJ, who attended Rutgers as an undergraduate and John Hopkins for his PhD. He  is actively involved with various scientific advisory boards, societies, journals and peer review committees, as well as numerous outreach activities to advance and promote underrepresented minorities in the sciences.  Professor De La Cruz’s research focuses in the areas of cell motility and the actin cytoskeleton, motor proteins, RNA processing enzymes, and signaling enzymes involved in blood clotting and calcification.  He considered becoming a medical doctor before pursuing his PhD, but he realized, “I wanted to be a teacher. It wasn’t even research. I was so enamored. That might not be the right word, but I was just so appreciative, and I admired my professors at Rutgers for just their commitment to undergraduate education and teaching. It was life changing and made me want to be a teacher.” Professor De La Cruz launched a new course last fall at Yale, MB&B 275: Biology at the Molecular Level, with two of his colleagues–Professor Andrew Miranker and Assistant Professor Adjunct at the Medical School, Zachary Levine. Students in the course described De La Cruz’s lectures as “so engaging–he kept the classroom environment so open to questions and further exploration of the topics.” 

During his time as a Faculty Fellow, Professor De La Cruz facilitated several discussions with faculty on teaching sensitive topics in STEM and teaching the work of controversial figures in one’s field.