Josh Eyler
Director
Adjunct Associate Professor of Humanities
Herring 129 | jeyler@rice.edu | 713.348.2732
After receiving his Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Connecticut in 2006, Josh moved to a position as Assistant Professor in the English department at Columbus State University in Georgia. Although he was approved for tenure at CSU, his love for teaching and his desire to work with instructors from many different disciplines led him to the field of faculty development and to George Mason University, where he served as an Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence from 2011-2013. In August of 2013, he came to Rice to take the position of Director of the CTE. He has published broadly on medieval literature, and his eclectic research interests include the biological basis of learning, Chaucer, and disability studies. His current projects include the book How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching, which is under contract with West Virginia University Press.
Robin Paige
Senior Associate Director
Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology
Herring 129 | robin.paige@rice.edu | 713.348.3093
Robin Paige brings to the CTE extensive experience in faculty development, evidence-based pedagogy, and curriculum and program development across the disciplines. She has a diverse background in higher education teaching at a wide variety of educational institutions from the community college to land grant and private research universities. Robin is active in all programs, events, and services at Rice’s Center for Teaching Excellence with a focus on programing for current and future faculty. She came to Rice University in 2012 as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology where she taught courses on gender, globalization, and the sociology of food and the environment, as well as, the core course in the Community Bridges Program at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. In 2014 she joined the CTE as an Assistant Director and was promoted to Associate Director in 2016. Robin continues to teach courses on globalization, food systems, and gender in the Department of Sociology. She remains engaged in many collaborative projects across campus and is active in residential college programs. From 2013- 2017 Robin was the Head Resident Fellow at Lovett College where she played a central role in the social, cultural, and academic life of the college.
Robin received her doctorate in Development Sociology from Cornell University in 2008. Prior to coming to Rice she was a tenured Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Service Learning Program of Gavilan College in northern California. She maintains an active research agenda with a focus on gender, migration, and alternative food-systems in the US and Mexico. Her current research is a qualitative study of women who remain behind when their husbands migrate from Mexico to the US and the social and emotional consequences for women during long periods of family separation.
Ania Kowalik
Assistant Director
Herring 129 | ania.kowalik@rice.edu | 713.348.2301
Ania Kowalik joined the CTE in the summer of 2018. In her role as Assistant Director, she coordinates programs for graduate students, such as the Certificate in Teaching and Learning and the Graduate Fellows program. Prior to coming to Rice, Ania worked with faculty, graduate students, and post-doctoral scholars at the University of Iowa, Georgia Tech, Georgia Southern University, and Emory University. She brings to the CTE a long-standing passion for teaching and helping others teach more effectively, and wide-ranging teaching experience, including required writing courses, discipline-specific graduate seminars, and English as a Foreign Language classes. Her current interests include teaching environmental literacy in the humanities, reflective practices in higher education, engaging students in classroom assessment, and the role of curiosity in learning and motivation.
Ania received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Emory in 2015. Her doctoral research focused on depictions of nature in Caribbean epic literature as a way of articulating a sense of belonging and community in colonial and post-colonial environments.
Elaine Chang
Program Coordinator
Herring 129 | ElaineChang@rice.edu | 713.348.2929
Elaine Chang is the Program Coordinator for the Center for Teaching Excellence. Prior to coming to Rice, she served as the Executive Assistant to the Head of School at The Joy School. Before her role at The Joy School, she had an opportunity to live in northern California to work as an Assistant Site Supervisor at a child development center. Elaine received her B.S. in Human Development and Family Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin.