Ignatian Teaching Fellows

Spring 2027

Ana M. Montero, Ph.D., is a full professor of Spanish in the Department of Linguistics, Literatures, and Cultures. A medievalist in training, her passion for words and how writing can enhance our potential to live fuller lives has led her to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, creative writing, translation, culture, and literature.  Her own research focuses on the appearance and development of new literary genres in medieval times, such as sentimental fiction, short stories, or book of knights. She explores how social context, artistic expression, and self-fashioning can interact.

Montero will use the Ignatian Teaching Fellowship to develop a new course that takes contemporary TV series in Spanish to explore and analyze language, relevant cultural themes in our global world, visual and writing techniques, creativity, and audience education. This course will equip students to be more conscious consumers of media culture, to communicate in a more sophisticated, creative way, and to deepen their understanding of human experience. By the end of the semester, students will have become more eloquent speakers and writers in Spanish, and they will have some notions on how to write a TV script and be visual storytellers. Majors, minors and other students with a background in Spanish language and cultures will be invited to take this class. 

Spring 2027

Dan Brewer is an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Saint Louis University. A chef and registered dietitian, he teaches courses in culinary arts, food preparation, and innovation in dietetics. His teaching emphasizes experiential learning, creative inquiry, and the kitchen as a space for connection, collaboration, and professional formation. He also mentors students through Fresh Gatherings Café and Farm, SLU’s student-operated café and urban teaching garden. Brewer is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction at Saint Louis University. His scholarship explores chef education, culinary identity, and what he describes as a “pedagogy of the kitchen.” As an Ignatian Teaching Fellow, he will redesign an advanced culinary course as a learning studio where students engage more intentionally in experimentation, refl ection, and collaborative learning. Through this work, he hopes to deepen students’ understanding of culinary practice as both a technical craft and a meaningful way of knowing, creating, and serving others.

Fall 2027

Kelsey Mesmer (Ph.D., Wayne State) is an assistant professor and graduate program coordinator in the Department of Communication. She teaches courses on news writing, reporting for social justice, and qualitative research methods. Her courses focus on ways journalists and other media-makers can produce more equitable media. Her research focuses on hostility toward the press, with a focus on anti-media rhetoric and how such hostility affects the routine practices of local journalists. Mesmer is also the Faculty Advisor for The University News.

Mesmer will use the Ignatian Teaching Fellowship to develop a new course on critical media literacy. Four areas will be of focus in the course: news literacy, social media literacy, visual literacy and digital literacy with a focus on generative AI. The course will serve as a Journalism and Media Foundations course and will focus not only on identifying credible media and practicing sound media consumption practices but also help students communicate media literacy — equipping them with the tools to translate what they know into action, conversation, and education for others. 

Spring 2026

Jerry Edris is an associate professor of English as a Second Language. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses for international emerging multilingual students. His courses focus on helping his students develop the linguistic, academic, and cultural skills needed to succeed in an American higher education institution. He earned a B.A. degree in English from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and an M.A.T. degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) from Webster University.

He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Saint Louis University. His research interests include culturally responsive teaching pedagogy, translanguaging practices in education, and refugee education. He will use the opportunity presented by the Ignatian Teaching Fellowship to further develop a new micro credential course in professional English communication skills for international emerging multilingual graduate students.

Spring 2026

Whitney Linsenmeyer, Ph.D., is an assistant professor and program director in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics. She teaches undergraduate courses including Foundations in Nutrition, Advanced Nutrition, Quantity Foods and Research Seminar. Linsenmeyer co-founded the Transgender Health Collaborative at SLU, a faculty-led network of researchers and clinicians working with the transgender community throughout SLU and partner organizations. Her own research centers on gender-affirming nutrition care for transgender and gender expansive communities. 

As an Ignatian Teaching Fellow, Linsenmeyer will be redesigning Foundations in Nutrition, an introductory nutrition course she has been teaching for the past decade. This is a large enrollment course that welcomes students majoring and minoring in nutrition, as well as those fulfilling their Core requirement for Ways of Thinking: Natural and Applied Sciences. She is enthusiastic about the opportunity to reimagine a a course she has now taught over 15 times.

Fall 2025 

Michael Mancini (Ph.D., M.S.W. University at Albany, N.Y.) is a professor in the School of Social Work. At SLU, he teaches graduate courses that focus on assessment, diagnosis and treatment of behavioral health conditions across the lifespan. His current research focuses on the implementation of integrated behavioral health practices in health and mental health settings. In 2021, he published a book titled Integrated Behavioral Health Practice that focused on the integration of evidence-based behavioral health practices in health settings for common behavioral health issues including depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction and violence. He is currently a member of the evaluation team for, Life Outside of Violence, a hospital-based violence intervention program that provides social and behavioral health services to youth experiencing community violence. He is also a co-Investigator on a four-year federal grant (2021-2025) from the Health Research and Services Administration (HRSA) titled, Strengthening the Behavioral Health Workforce for Children and Youth (2021-2025). This project led to the development of a multidisciplinary fellowship focused on educating behavioral health providers in social work, psychiatry, psychology, and medical family therapy to provide integrated trauma-informed behavioral health services to at-risk children, adolescents and transitional age youth. 

As an Ignatian Fellow, Michael plans to develop a course focused on understanding and implementing antiracist practices in social work. This course, required for all social work graduate students, will focus on social justice, critical reflection and action. By the end of the course students will be able to critically examine and understand the concepts of race and racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity through the critical analysis of social work values and ethics. Students will also be able to implement antiracist social work practices that are affirming to those with identities that have been historically marginalized and targeted at the micro, mezzo and macro levels as well as build collaborative coalitions to dismantle oppressive systems of power and domination in organizations, communities and systems.

Fall 2025

Barb Yemm, D.P.T., has a B.S. in Physical Therapy from Saint Louis University, a Master of Health Science from the University of Indianapolis, and a D.P.T. in Physical Therapy from Marymount University. She is a board-certified specialist in Orthopedic Physical Therapy. Yemm is an APTA Credentialed Clinical Instructor. She teaches in physical therapy professional coursework including Musculoskeletal Conditions II, III and IV.  She maintains her clinical practice and is the sirector of the SLU Pro Bono Physical Therapy Services where students engage in physical therapy management of under and uninsured community members through both coursework and volunteer opportunities.

As a participant in the Ignatian Teaching Fellowship, Yemm is eager to refine teaching practices that emphasize cura personalis — care for the whole person — even in large settings. Drawing inspiration from Ignatian pedagogy, she is particularly interested in how reflection, action, and collaborative learning can be integrated into the teaching of larger groups, with the goal of fostering both intellectual growth and personal development and will be focusing on the Musculoskeletal Conditions II course taught in the Fall 2025.

Spring 2025

Lucy Cashion (M.F.A. Theatre, Columbia University in the City of New York) is an associate professor of theatre and the director of the Theatre & Dance Program in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. At SLU she primarily teaches directing courses and regularly directs plays in the University’s theatrical Season. Professionally, she creates experimental adaptations of canonical works, often collaborating with several groups of people to devise theatrical productions. Her adaptation of Antigone (produced by Equally Represented Arts & SATE; August 2019) was a creative collaboration among SLU Theatre students, Prison Performing Arts participants at the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic, and Correctional Center, and professional, St. Louis theatre artists. Cashion is the artistic director of ERA and a guest director with PPA. Recently with ERA, she produced and directed the album SHE (2021), a radio play by Nancy Bell. Most recently with PPA, she directed Hag-Seed by Stacey Lents, adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel by the same name, at the Northeastern Correctional Center. She currently directing Saint Joan of Arc for PPA at the W.E.R.D.C.C.

In Spring 2023, Cashion designed the course ‘Collaboration: Arts Incubator’ in the Learning Studio. In this course, students will collaborate to create writings, films, and performances that investigate large questions. These questions could be related to specific topics, such as an historical event, or broader phenomena, such as a fear of death. The course will challenge students to conduct these investigations together and within the parameters of an artistic form. The Learning Studio will facilitate turning the classroom into a laboratory for artistic creation and collaboration.