08/14/2026
Congratulations to the 2026 NSSR Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award recipients! Swipe to see this year’s recipients, nominated by students and faculty from across the university, stand out for thoughtful discussions, connecting lived experiences to theory, and creating compassionate learning environments.
🌟 Carlos Jose Celis, Public and Urban Policy PhD
“Carlos Celis is not simply an outstanding Teaching Assistant — he is one of the most influential educators I have encountered in my graduate training, and among the most generous thinkers I have had the privilege of learning beside....He is the one educator who has consistently helped me break apart my own models of thinking when I was boxing myself in, to really consider who I am in conversation with, what I am actually trying to research, and what I want to do with that research. He has helped me be clear about my audience and why I want to present things in the ways I do. He has seen the mess inside my brain and helped me make sense of it.”
🌟 Hermann Derwanz, Politics PhD
“He has been extremely thoughtful over the years in learning and adapting his instruction to each student body. Students comment that he is extremely responsive to their needs, going ‘above and beyond.’ Several students noted that they had started the class with a lot of math anxiety and that over the course of the semester they had developed a new-found confidence in their abilities.”
🌟 Starlett Hartley, Cognitive, Social, and Developmental Psychology PhD
“Star was not just a great TA, she was a true pleasure to spend time with. Her weekly TA sessions were one of my favorite hours in the week. Star is so enthusiastic about social psychology. With such a small group, we not only discussed the weekly readings for class, we had time to talk about different studies and theories that the class didn’t cover that expanded my knowledge base and kept me curious. Listening to Star speak on things really engaged me and made me excited about the field. Any time I was confused by the readings, she could explain the information in a way I understood and we always thought about real-life and how things we learned about in class might look i
