Congratulations to the Provostial MCFI Ambassadors for the academic year 2025–2026! These exceptional faculty will serve as peer mentors to guide and inspire future cohorts and provide valuable input for the ongoing development of MCFI programming.
Patrick Deer
Patrick Deer is Associate Professor of English at New York University. He was Director of Undergraduate Studies in English from 2019-2022 and Director of College Honors Programs for NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences from 2011-2014. He is on the Steering Committee for the new CAS Minor in Medical Humanities. Before doing his doctoral studies at Columbia University in English and Comparative Literature, he received his undergraduate degree in English at Balliol College, Oxford University. He is the faculty coordinator of the NYU Cultures of War and the Postwar research collaborative, which offers public programming with scholars, veterans, organizers, writers, and artists, and he co-hosts the Words After War civilian-veteran creative writing workshop. His teaching and research include war culture and war literature, twentieth and twenty-first century literature and culture, modernism and contemporary British, American, and Anglophone literature, the global Cold War, genre theory, global crime fiction, and the relationship between literature, film, and music. His first book, Culture in Camouflage: War, Empire and Modern British Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009; paperback edition, 2016), explores the emergence of modern war culture in the first half of the 20th century. He also co-edited a special issue of the journal Social Text on Punk and Its Afterlives (ST 116, Fall 2013), with Jayna Brown and Tavia Nyong’o, and edited the special issue, The Ends of War, Social Text 91 (Summer 2007). He is currently working on two book projects about twentieth and twenty-first century transatlantic literature and culture.
Cynthia McCallister
Dr. Cynthia McCallister is an Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. Dr. McCallister’s innovative approach focuses on cultivating individual agency and optimal decision-making. Her research uniquely bridges educational theory with broader concepts of human well-being across the lifespan, from early childhood through adulthood, that emphasize continuous self-improvement and adaptation. The McCallister Model has been used as a holistic curriculum in many New York City schools, enabling learners to take action in ways that point unwaveringly to their highest potential. Through her ongoing research, Dr. McCallister continues to explore how educational principles can be leveraged to enhance overall human well-being and self-actualization across diverse life stages and contexts.
Gwyneth McClendon
Gwyneth McClendon is an Associate Professor in the Politics Department at New York University. She is the author of two books, Envy in Politics (Princeton University Press) and From Pews to Politics (Cambridge University Press), and numerous scholarly articles. She studies religion and politics, political participation, and political psychology, with a focus both in the United States and in various countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, and Sierra Leone.
Rohini Pahwa
Rohini Pahwa is an Associate Professor and Director of the PhD Program at NYU Silver. Dr. Pahwa’s areas of specialization are severe mental illness and cross-cultural and cross-national research, and her work is rooted in her research, practice, and teaching experience in India and the United States. As a mental health researcher, Dr. Pahwa examines the process of community integration and the influences of individual and systemic factors on social networks, community integration and mental health outcomes for individuals with severe mental illnesses through qualitative, quantitative, and social network methodologies. She is currently a principal investigator on a 5-year National Institute of Mental Health funded study entitled “A Longitudinal Examination of Factors Predicting the Social Networks and Mental Health Services of Black and Latine(x) Individuals With Serious Mental Illnesses” that examines the relationships between risk and protective factors, structural, functional and experiential aspects of social relationships, and mental health outcomes for individuals with serious mental illnesses.