The St. Kate's Teaching Hub
About the Teaching Hub
The mission of the teaching hub is to cultivate a community dedicated to pedagogical excellence with a focus on academic inquiry, social justice, and reflection, in service of St. Catherine’s mission to educate women to lead and influence. The hub offers resources, support, learning opportunities, and discursive spaces for faculty and staff to continue developing their skills in teaching, learning, and student success.
Teaching circles are small, informal groups of faculty and staff that engage in year-long study of a single pedagogical topic. Previous topics have included anti-racist pedagogy, AI in the classroom, and career readiness.
Teaching Circle applications are due by Friday, September 5. You can learn more about Teaching Circles and access the application by selecting this link.
AI in Teaching & Learning Workshop Series
This workshop series provides a space to learn, explore, ask questions, and share ideas about AI at St. Kate’s. Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming higher education. This bi-weekly lunch-hour series is designed to help St. Kate’s faculty and staff explore AI’s impact on teaching, learning, and research.
Our goals are to:
- Demystify AI and its educational applications.
- Provide hands-on opportunities to experiment with AI tools.
- Explore teaching strategies that foster learning and critical thinking in the AI era.
- Share concerns and practical solutions around academic integrity.
- Discuss how to prepare students for an AI-integrated future in their disciplines.
Schedule (Fall 2025): Wednesdays, 12–1 pm (bi-weekly) in the Tech Hub – LIB 119 (with Zoom option) starting October 1.
Questions? Contact Brad Thames, Instructional Designer, at bjthames913@stkate.edu
St. Catherine University has chosen to use the Constructive Dialogue Institute’s Perspectives program during the 25/26 academic year as one of several resources to help our campus community learn how to more meaningfully engage one another in meaningful discussion.
Founded in 2017, the Constructive Dialogue Institute aims to alleviate the rising division and distrust threatening to tear America apart. Their online Perspectives course is a blended learning program that distills rigorous behavioral science research into easily digestible concepts to foster openness to diverse perspectives and equip faculty, staff, and students with the skills to engage in conversations across lines of difference. The program includes six online lessons, which each take approximately 30 minutes to complete. There are also optional peer-to-peer activities that can be implemented.
To learn more about Perspectives, please visit their website. To sign-up to either take or facilitate a Perspectives course, please use this Google Form. To access additional resources for facilitating a Perspectives course, please access this Google Folder.
The Teaching Hub offers four bi-annual Pedagogy Microgrants up to $1,500 to faculty and staff working on pedagogical projects that focus on academic inquiry, social justice, and reflection. Two are awarded in the fall and two are awarded in the spring.
Microgrant applications are due Friday, October 17. You can learn more about microgrants and access the application by selecting this link.
Teaching Hub Fellowships are year-long faculty positions. Faculty are awarded two course releases to research and develop projects that address issues of particular pedagogical importance for the St. Kate's community.
Applications for Teaching Hub Fellowships will be opening in early Spring 2026.
- Fall 2025 Faculty-Staff Institute site page
- NotebookLM + slides
- Teaching With AI
- Read, Lead, Influence + slides
- ChatGPT and Higher Education Series, Fall 2023 (3 videos)
- What Does ChatGPT Teach US about Teaching?
- Mission Chair Conversation: Online Education, Student Needs, and the St. Kate's Mission, November 2, 2023 (1 video)
- Fall 24 Fac-Staff resources
2025-2026 Teaching Hub Fellows
Cuc Vu
Cuc Vu is the Teaching Hub Fellow for Inclusive Practice and an Assistant Professor of Biology. She has a master's of science in Biological Sciences and is a P.h.D candidate in STEM education. Her research journey started with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) within the sciences and has naturally evolved to inclusive pedagogy.
Bethany Rahn
Bethany Rahn is the Teaching Hub Fellow for Interdisciplinary. In this role, she will focus on strengthening interdisciplinary connections across SHAS by fostering collaborations between Art and STEM fields. Rahn plans to facilitate teaching circles centered on integrating high-impact practices into cross-disciplinary teaching.
Kayla Lantz
Kayla A. Lantz serves as the Teaching Hub Fellow for Student Retention. She connects instructors and tutoring services to support students in introductory courses, focusing on the transition to college and building community. This fall, she’ll pilot strategies like embedded tutoring and standards-based homework, and hopes to collaborate with others to expand them campus-wide.
Mission Chairs
The Teaching Hub is fortunate to be closely aligned with the work done by St. Catherine's Mission Chairs. The Teaching Hub and Mission Chairs collaborate extensively to design programming, connect with the community, and ensure that our ongoing pedagogical work is committed to promoting our important mission goals of centering women's education, Catholic identity, and the liberal arts. Click here for more information on St. Kate's Mission Chairs.
Nawojka Lesinski
Nawojka is an Associate Professor of political science at St. Kate's and the Endowed Mission Chair in Women's Education. She has a background in urban and comparative politics, with a particular interest in civil society and social movements. She is proud to be part of such an engaged institution, and is excited to further reinvigorate the St. Kate's public sphere.
Sharon Howell
Sharon serves as the director of the Center for Spirituality and Social Justice at St. Kate's and the Endowed Chair in Catholic Identity. As a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet, she brings a love for academia, the church, and serving others to St. Kate’s.
Margret McCue-Enser
Margret is a Professor of communication studies at St. Kate's and the Endowed Mission Chair in Liberal Arts. She brings empathy and enthusiasm for our collective work and the role it serves in our communities. She focuses on gathering and sharing stories about how our work serves communities inside and outside academia, exploring Indigenous and other ontological orientations to learning, and creating opportunities for community members to gather and share what home means to them, including the role this shared university space plays in constituting community.
Ben Harley
Ben Harley is an Assistant Professor of English whose work focuses on public discourse, multimodal composition, cultural rhetorics, and pedagogy. He is dedicated to fostering community, building connections, and promoting student success. Before joining St. Catherine in 2025, he earned his PhD in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of South Carolina, served as the founding director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Northern State University, and worked as an instructional designer at Texas State Technical College.
Sarah Pavey
For general inquiries, contact the Teaching Hub teachinghub@stkate.edu.
Sarah Pavey is the Administrative Assistant for the Teaching Hub. She is passionate about nurturing community connections between faculty, staff, and students. She earned an MA in English from the University of St. Thomas and worked as a library technician in archives and circulation before joining St. Kate’s in 2023. In addition to her role in the Teaching Hub, Sarah is also the administrative assistant for the Office of Scholarly Engagement and the Mission Chairs. Outside of St. Kate’s she is a freelance writer and private tutor.
Bella Lee
Bella is the marketing intern for the Teaching Hub. She is a Marketing major who has a passion for brand creativity and social media. She enrolled at St. Kate's in 2023 originally to be an Art major but found love for the marketing world. She is expecting to graduate next Spring with a Bachelor of Business.