Thota, Trim Selected as 2024-25 Chancellor’s Leadership Fellows
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The Office of Faculty Development has announced six UMass Amherst faculty members as Chancellor’s Leadership Fellows for 2024-25, including Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) faculty members Neena Thota and Michelle Trim.
The Chancellor’s Leadership Fellowship program seeks to cultivate future campus leaders by offering a half-time, one-year temporary appointment to an administrative area on campus and providing mentoring from the leader of the host unit. Fellows are expected to launch a significant program during their fellowship year.
Neena Thota, senior lecturer II, will create professional development materials and a guide for a menu of programming options to support faculty mentors of graduate teaching assistants and associates within the framework of inclusive teaching practices. She will work with Claire Hamilton, associate provost and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, and Beth Jakob, associate dean of the UMass Amherst Graduate School.
Thota, who also serves as the CICS associate chair of teaching development, designed and teaches the program, “Teaching Assistants as Tomorrow’s Faculty,” which prepares teaching assistants to fulfill their duties in an effective and pedagogically sound manner. She is the director of the Early Research Scholar Program, an Institute of Diversity Sciences (IDS) Faculty Fellow, and engaged in a number of ongoing National Science Foundation (NSF) funded projects.
“I am looking forward to collecting information on the scope and nature of programs provided by programs, departments, and colleges which support faculty in their supervision of graduate teaching assistants and associates on our campus and to identify best practices offered by peer institutions,” Thota says. “I am excited to then implement a pilot offering of the mentor training materials and a plan for broad-scale dissemination to our campus.”
Michelle Trim, senior lecturer II, will support campus efforts to adopt the responsible use of artificial intelligence tools by developing training materials and content that outlines the campus’ policies, recommendations, and best practices on the use of AI and similar tools. In collaboration with campus governance, additional work involves consideration of which recommendations by the Joint Task Force on Generative Artificial Intelligence need to be translated into policies or to be studied further. Trim will work with Tilman Wolf, senior vice provost and deputy chancellor for operational and organizational strategies.
Trim teaches courses in informatics and on the social impacts and ethical considerations of computing and directs the CICS junior-year writing program. She was among the first class of Teaching for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (TIDE) fellows in 2016 and of the Public Interest Technology (PIT) fellows of 2022, was awarded the College Outstanding Teaching Award in 2019-2020, and the Faculty Peer Mentoring Award in 2021. Her scholarship focuses on the impacts of computers on society and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching data literacy. She is the current chair of the Association of Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computers and Society (ACM SIGCAS).
Trim says, “As a Chancellor's Leadership Fellow, I look forward to engaging diverse audiences in learning about AI technologies and their responsible use, while building on the existing best practices for interdisciplinary collaboration and shared governance that are well established on our campus. My hope is to use my knowledge and training to equip the members of our community to approach AI tools thoughtfully and deliberately, and with consideration for the potential impacts of their use.”
View the complete list of 2024-25 Chancellor’s Leadership Fellows
