Melissa Wright

Melissa A. Wright (she/her) serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Pedagogy (CEP), where she provides strategic direction for the Center and thought leadership across the Barnard community on the principles and practices of post-secondary teaching and learning. In addition to running daily operations at the CEP, Dr. Wright also supports educational grant research and evaluation; regularly consults on curricular development; and fosters dialogue among faculty, students, and teaching staff on topics ranging from equitable grading practices to the ethical implications of AI in the classroom. With the support of the larger team, Dr. Wright leads the Learning, Engagement, and Assessment Fellow (LEAF) program, which brings faculty and students together in mutually-rewarding partnerships focused on faculty’s teaching questions. She has also recently taught a Barnard first-year seminar on food and politics.

Previously, Dr. Wright was the Senior Associate Director of the CEP and the Associate Director of Assessment and Evaluation at the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Columbia University. She earned her PhD (Comparative Literature) and MA (English) from the University at Buffalo and her BA (English and German) from Canisius College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, philosophies, SIGCSE TS, AEM Education and Training, The Black Scholar, Penumbra: A Journal of Psychoanalysis and Modernity, and the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). You will find Dr. Wright in the Center for Engaged Pedagogy, which is 126 Milstein Center.