Faculty Teaching Fellows

Meet the Faculty Teaching Fellows.


Dr. Armen Amirkhanian

Associate Professor
Armen Amirkhanian
Learn more about Dr. Armen Amirkhanian

Dr. Armen Amirkhanian, PE is an associate professor in the Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering department. For over a decade, he has performed numerous applied research projects on civil engineering materials and concrete pavements. He is actively involved in educational activities both at UA and in the industry. At UA, he has developed the “Will It Tornado?” project, where students design a concrete wall that can survive the impact of a 2×4 traveling at 150 mph. He has also performed activities with numerous summer camps and programs on campus. Outside the university, he is a voting member and secretary of the American Concrete Institute committee S802 (Teaching Methods) and has taught numerous industry technology transfer courses. He is a registered engineer in three states and brings that real-life experience to the classroom.

Dr. George L.
Daniels

Associate Professor
George Daniels
Learn more about Dr. George Daniels

Dr. George L. Daniels is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media. He teaches multiple courses at the undergraduate and graduate level including Journalistic Principles & Practices and Race, Gender & Media. Dr. Daniels is in his 21st year at The University of Alabama after working as a television news producer for eight years. His research on diversity issues in the media workplace and change in the television newsroom has appeared in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator and the Journal of Radio Studies.

Dr. Isabelle Drewelow

Associate Professor
Isabelle Drewelow
Learn more about Dr. Isabelle Drewelow

Dr. Isabelle Drewelow is an associate professor of French and Applied Linguistics. Her research interests include teaching and learning intercultural competence, affective dimensions of foreign language learning, and experiential and transformational learning and pedagogies. She teaches upper-level French language and culture courses, French for Specific Purposes, and media courses, as well as graduate courses on qualitative research methods and special topics in Second Language Acquisition. She is the recipient of the 2017 Alabama World Language Association’s Educator of Excellence Award for post-secondary educators.

Russell
Gold

Professor of Law
Russell Gold
Learn more about Russell Gold

Russell Gold is a professor of Law who teaches courses in criminal law and criminal procedure. Much of his scholarship looks comparatively at civil and criminal procedure, considering insights that each system can learn from the other. His scholarship has recently appeared in journals including Arizona State Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, the Alabama Law Review and the American Criminal Law Review.  He recently received the Outstanding Faculty Member Award from The University of Alabama’s Student Bar Association, and he received the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award when he taught at the NYU School of Law.

Dr. Lori Greene

Senior Instructor
Lori Greene
Learn more about Dr. Lori Greene

Lori F. Greene, PhD, RDN, LDN is a senior instructor and the director of the Coordinated Program in Dietetics at The University of Alabama, with over 20 years of experience in higher education and the nutrition field. As an educator and registered dietitian nutritionist, Lori is passionate about communicating evidence-based nutrition information and promoting all foods. Current research interests include effectiveness of education techniques, risk perceptions of food and nutrition messages and food/nutrition marketing.

Dr. Abby Horton

Assistant Professor
Abby Horton
Learn more about Dr. Abby Horton

Dr. Abby Grammer Horton is an assistant professor at The University of Alabama’s Capstone College of Nursing and is a four-time graduate of The University of Alabama. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Political Science in 2006, Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2010, and later a Master of Science in Nursing in Rural Case Management in 2011. Most recently, she completed her doctorate in Instructional Leadership with an emphasis in Nurse Education in August 2021. Dr. Horton currently teaches in the undergraduate nursing program at CCN with more than 10 years of higher education experience. Her interests in nursing practice and research include health policy reform; diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging; health promotion and wellness; mental health; holistic care; rural health; spirituality and complementary and alternative medicine practices. Dr. Horton also teaches part-time for the University Honors Program and serves as the WellBAMA wellness class educator on UA’s campus as a certified health and life coach.

Dr. Jessica Kidd

Associate Professor
Jessica Kid
Learn more about Dr. Jessica Kidd

Dr. Jessica Kidd is an associate professor (RCAP) in the Department of English. She is a lifelong Alabamian with an academic background in geology and creative writing. Her book Bad Jamie was published in Fall 2020 by Anhinga Press. Her poetry has also appeared in The Paris Review, Goblin Fruit, Atticus Review, Waccamaw and other journals. Her fiction has been published in Phantom Drift, Blue Earth Review, Puerto del Sol and The Normal School. Dr. Kidd writes in speculative modes, primarily fantasy and magical realism. Her current work focuses on an intersection of Southern environment, family folklore and the fantastic.

Dr. Maura Mills

Associate Professor
Maura Mills
Learn more about Dr. Maura Mills

Dr. Maura Mills is an associate professor in the Department of Management. She has been at The University of Alabama since Fall 2016, with previous experience at Hofstra University and in consulting roles related to data analytics and organizational behavior space. Dr. Mills teaches a variety of courses at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral level, with the primary goals that students critically engage with the course material and work toward processing and applying the information in their academic and professional lives. Her research focuses on positive organizational behavior, including primary attention to issues regarding employee attitudes and well-being, work engagement and the work-life/work-family interface, particularly as it relates to employee gender.

Dr. Tara Mock

Assistant Professor
Tara Mock
Learn more about Dr. Tara Mock

Dr. Tara Mock is an assistant professor and director of the Capstone Experience with the Honor’s College at The University of Alabama. Dr. Mock comes to the Honor’s College from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where she was a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellow of Africana Studies and an affiliated faculty member in Asian Studies. Her research and teaching interests include Modern Africa, Africa-Asia relations, diaspora, cultural identity and community formation, and visual culture. Dr. Mock earned her PhD in African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Prior to MSU, Dr. Mock studied international business at H.E.C. Paris, received a MALD in International Communication and International Political Economy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and earned a BA in the History of Non-Western Developing Nations at Louisiana State University. Dr. Mock completed her first book, Contaminated Perceptions (forthcoming, 2026), which critically analyzes the intersection of race, culture and geopolitics in the construction of Africanity in global imagination.

Dr. Brenda Smith

Professor
Brenda Smith
Learn more about Dr. Brenda Smith

Dr. Brenda D. Smith is a professor in the School of Social Work, where she teaches social welfare policy to MSW and PhD students. Her research illuminates policy and practice inequities in the child welfare system and addresses policy and services disparities between and within states.

Dr. Stefanie Wind

Associate Director
Stefanie Wind
Learn more about Dr. Stefanie Wind

Dr. Stefanie A. Wind is an associate professor of Educational Measurement at The University of Alabama, where she teaches graduate courses related to research methodology, measurement and psychometrics, and statistics. Her primary research interests include the exploration of methodological issues in the field of educational measurement, with emphases on methods related to rater-mediated assessments, rating scales, latent trait models (i.e., Rasch models and item response theory models), and nonparametric item response theory. Her collaborative research activities often involve scale development and validation projects, including scales to measure constructs related to affective variables (e.g., empathy, perceptions of instructional quality, perceptions of power dynamics), and student achievement in a variety of domains (e.g., science, mathematics, writing), among others.