Teaching Academy 2026 Presenters

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Abu Bony Amin (he/him) is a PhD candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMass Amherst and a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award. He served as a Teaching Fellow for four consecutive years, from Fall 2022 to Fall 2025, working with first-year students to create engaging, supportive, and experience-based learning environments. He has also served as a TA in electrical and computer engineering courses. His teaching emphasizes real-time engagement, hands-on learning, inclusive participation, and connecting classroom concepts to practical applications. Through this workshop, he hopes to help graduate TAs and instructors design structured active learning experiences that are practical, adaptable, and immediately useful across disciplines.

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Maryam Amiri (she/her) is a PhD candidate of Composition and Rhetoric in the English Department at University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature and a MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and has years of experience as a cross-cultural writer, teacher, and translator. Her research interests include transnational literacy, language ideologies, and migration writing. 

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Marissa Hanley (she/her) is a third-year doctoral candidate in Plant and Soil Sciences at UMass Amherst’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture. As a graduate student, she has served as a TA for eight different courses, leading both lab and discussion sections. These foundational TA experiences inspired her to pursue the CNS Teaching Fellowship at UMass, serving as instructor of record for a first-year seminar in Fall 2025 and returning as a fellow in Fall 2026. Marissa is committed to inclusive, curiosity-driven, hands-on learning and aspires to become a professor post-PhD.

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Gretchen Hohmeyer (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the Language, Literacy, and Culture concentration of the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has an MA in children’s Literature and MS in Library Science from Simmons University. Her research interests include elementary social studies education, children’s literature, and unpacking the ways American history is imagined for children. 

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Scholastika Massawe (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research examines language policy and planning in education, multilingualism, language-in-education policy, and issues of equity and belonging in educational contexts. As an international scholar from Tanzania, she is particularly interested in how language, culture, and identity shape teaching and learning experiences across diverse settings.

At UMass Amherst, Scholastika has served as a Teaching Assistant and instructor in the Writing Program for four years, where she currently teaches First-Year Writing and provides writing support as a graduate writing tutor. She has also worked as a Teaching Assistant in the College of Education and previously served as a Graduate Assistant Director, mentoring and supporting new instructors as they navigated teaching, course design, classroom management, and professional development. Her work as a teacher, mentor, and researcher informs her commitment to creating inclusive learning environments that recognize multilingual and multicultural experiences as strengths.

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Larri Miller (she/they) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication, while also pursuing graduate certificates in Statistical & Computational Data Science and Feminist Studies. Her research sits at the intersection of computational social science, feminist studies, and media studies, with dissertation work focused on conspiracy theorizing in digital spaces. Larri has taught in the Communication, WGSS, and Data Analytics & Computational Social Science (DACSS) departments at UMass. 

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Christina Muoio (she/her) is a doctoral student in Literature in the Early Modern and Renaissance Studies track and holds a graduate certificate in WGSS at UMass. 

She is passionate about undergraduate teaching and has extensive experience in both the Writing Program and English Department, including teaching assistant work for the undergraduate Shakespeare lecture and serving as Graduate Assistant Director in the Writing Program. She has also taught a First-Year Seminar on queer theory and Twelfth Night, and designed and taught an early modern-themed section of English 132: Gender, Sexuality, Literature, and Culture. Her pedagogy emphasizes inclusive, discussion-based classrooms that support student confidence, critical thinking, and engagement with literature and history.

Christina is a REAL Fellow and currently serves as EGO Co-Chair. Her research focuses on mixed-race studies and the exclusion of mixed-race characters from the early modern literary canon, along with interests in queer theory, gendered epistemologies, and interracial relationships in early modern drama.