The Faculty Mentor for Summer Immersive Fellowship Cohort will co-mentor the cohort of Curated Immersive Summer Fellows and Pitch Your Own Summer Immersives Fellows with their host organization supervisors and the Senior Director for Graduate Advising and Engagement for the Humanities. Summer immersive fellowships provide Ph.D. students with the opportunity to gain experiences with host organizations in collaborative, mission-focused project work drawing on their high-level skills as researchers and writers.

Summer 2023 Faculty Mentor

Shalini Ayyagari, Associate Professor of Music in the Ethnomusicology Program, has been working across interdisciplinary and institutional boundaries to form connections both in and outside of academia in her research and teaching. She conducts her ethnographic research among a community of hereditary professional musicians in the Thar Desert borderland between India and Pakistan and she recently wrote a book on this topic, Musical Resilience: Performing Patronage in the Indian Thar Desert. She works with both undergraduate and graduate students at Pitt and includes community outreach, volunteerism, and local engagement in all of her courses. She is currently developing Pitt's first Initiative in Public Ethnomusicology, which will be a place for students and the local community to gather around music and performance. 

Summer 2022 Faculty Mentor

Hannah Johnson, Professor of English, brings a collaborative approach to the role of Faculty Mentor role. In her experience of mentoring graduate students one-on-one, she has encouraged them to think strategically and holistically about career development opportunities available to them on campus and off. she supported a cohort of colleagues as they sought new directions for their writing and research agendas as facilitator of a Mid-Career Faculty Writing Accountability Group during the summer of 2021. Additionally, during Pitt’s shift to remote instruction, she assisted graduate and faculty instructors as they adapted their courses for remote delivery as the Multi-Modal Pedagogy Coordinator.

Summer 2021 Faculty Mentor

Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Patrick McKelvey’s approach to graduate advising emphasizes professional development, experiential learning, and career diversity. He also brings experience working in the non-profit theatre sector to the Faculty Mentor role. He conducted educational, dramaturgical, and institutional research for major producing organizations, including McCarter Theatre Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the Sundance Theatre Festival. Before coming to Pitt, he was an Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at Florida State University.