Our Team
Faculty Affiliate, Department of History & Program in American Studies
Beth bleeds purple. She grew up in Evanston with a faculty father, was a debate “Cherub” at Northwestern’s National High School Institute, and graduated from Northwestern with an undergraduate degree in history. She honed her interests in the development of culturally diverse educational institutions during a summer ethnographic field study, in Arizona, about the educational experiences of Navajo students and a junior year abroad in Germany. A precursor to the undergraduate research grant allowed her to conduct senior-thesis research in Philadelphia, which later evolved into her doctoral dissertation.
Beth completed two master’s degrees as a Marshall Scholar at the University of Cambridge and earned her PhD at Princeton University, supported by dissertation fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies and Princeton’s Center for Human Values. Her scholarship on religious and ethnic diversity in Reformation Europe and colonial North America has appeared in German and American publications. Additionally, she is the associate chair for Shepard Residential College and a regular contributor to the Inside Higher Ed Blog, University of Venus. Each spring, with her husband and two sons, she enjoys hosting Northwestern’s British Scholarships Garden Party at their Evanston home.
Lecturer, Department of Anthropology
Stephen hails from south-central Pennsylvania, where he frolicked in creeks (“cricks”) and skinned his knees. The child of teachers, he came by his need to tell you how it should be quite early and honestly. His father’s love of all manner of flora (especially fruit and nut trees) and fauna (“critters”) led Steve to study biology in college. He concentrated in marine biology and can, to this day, describe the ampullae of Lorenzini and tell you on which end of a shark to look for them.
Following a disastrous attempt to learn sufficient electronics to make musical instruments for people with limited dexterity, he joined the Peace Corps. Hoping to work in marine fisheries projects in the South Pacific, he jumped at the chance to work in freshwater fisheries in Tanzania. Two years in Tanzania yielded fluency in Swahili, a desire to study ethnomusicology, and a German wife. He wooed her in Swahili!
After the Peace Corps, Steve showed up on the doorstep of the musicology department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and refused to leave until they gave him a PhD. He did produce a Fulbright- and Wenner-Gren-funded dissertation on the music and dance clubs in the Matengo region of southwestern Tanzania, so they didn’t just give him the doctorate for his winning personality. Along the way, he became proficient in German and was once a fairly good saron player and singer in the UIUC gamelan.
Steve first came to Northwestern in 2001 for a three-year replacement position in the Bienen School of Music. He moved to the Office of Fellowships, in 2004, where he manages several fellowships competitions and gives grant-writing workshops to unsuspecting graduate students across the campus. He is a longtime fellow in ISRC, makes and plays open-back banjos, is still married to his sweetheart from Tanzania, and has two college-age children.
Amy manages many fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students, with the majority being international opportunities.
She has worked in higher education, philanthropy, and global engagement for over 20 years, including positions with the Open Society Institute, the University of Michigan International Institute, and the Peace Corps. She holds a BA in Latin American studies from the University of Michigan and an MA in international and comparative education from Columbia University. Amy has traveled to more than 20 countries and loves helping Northwestern students study and work abroad.
When not in the office, Amy enjoys hiking with her husband, sailing with her daughters, and visiting art museums.
LaTanya, born and raised in Chicago, developed a love of life sciences from her mother, who shared with her a strong interest in the human body and nutrition. LaTanya earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from Howard University, where her thesis research investigated protein changes in drought response in Arabidopsis Thalaina. She completed her PhD in 2014 at Northwestern, in the Driskill Graduate Program, studying the regulation of microRNA mediated EMT in prostate cancer. As a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Illinois at Chicago, LaTanya continued her research on microRNA regulation in the prostate. In support of her educational goals, LaTanya received the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes Fellowship, on which she conducted research projects in Tsukuba, Japan, and the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Fellowship.
LaTanya has more than a decade of experience in teaching and advising undergraduate and graduate students. She enjoys spending time with her husband, a fellow scientist, and her two active, young sons who keep her busy and thoroughly entertained. She also enjoys reading biographies, traveling, and trying new restaurants when she can get a babysitter.
Faculty Affiliate, Department of Radio/Television/Film
Jason works primarily with first- and second-year students, applicants for awards in the United States, and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences. He also manages the office's website and directs the use of its social media channels.
In summer 2016, he co-organized the first-ever Midwest Fellowships Advising Symposium, which considered the topic of inclusive advising practices. In 2019, a book chapter he co-authored, entitled "Excellent Sheep or Passionate Weirdos? Fellowships and Fellowships Advising as Vehicles for Self-Authorship," appeared in Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Nationally Competitive Scholarships.
Jason received his PhD in screen cultures from Northwestern and wrote his dissertation on the history of film criticism across several moments of major technological change; a portion of this research, entitled “So Meaninglessly Present: Pauline Kael Watches Movies on TV,” appears in Talking About Pauline Kael: Critics, Filmmakers, and Scholars Remember an Icon. He has also taught introductory media studies courses at DePaul University and undergraduate seminars at Northwestern, including Multi-Platform Auteurs and Theories of Genre.
Jason is a fellow of the Humanities Residential College at Chapin Hall, where he also served as the associate chair from 2018 to 2022. In 2017, Jason received the T. William Heyck Award for his contributions to Chapin.
Jason lives on Northwestern's campus with his wife, Elizabeth Lenaghan, who is the faculty-in-residence for Elder Hall and an associate professor of instruction in the Writing Program. In his free time, you can likely find him watching a movie, reading college football blogs, or forcing himself to exercise.
Silvia was born and raised in the Chicago metropolitan area. She discovered her love for empowering people to act on their own and others’ behalf as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a tenant, she used the self-help tenant laws to get her security deposit back. When she moved back to Chicago, she volunteered for community organizations that empowered tenants to use the Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance. Following a call to ministry, Silvia graduated with a master’s degree in divinity from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, in Evanston, IL. The road to becoming a minister was diverted into being a librarian. Silvia discovered that she loved helping students learn and grow in their critical thinking and writing skills. The Covid pandemic disrupted her life, allowing her to try a new career as a pharmacy technician, which provided excellent training for becoming a program assistant.
Silvia loves to travel. When backpacking in Europe, in every country she was in, she always learned how to say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and you’re welcome, and then said them at every opportunity.
Maddie Alan-Lee is a doctoral candidate in screen cultures at Northwestern University. Her dissertation focuses on contemporary genres of networked video and imagery, including autonomous sensory meridian response, slime videos, and #oddlysatisfying, placing them in conversation with digital media artworks that engage and critique these popular aesthetic forms. She holds an MA in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University and a BA in Media Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Maddie believes that writing, at its best, is a collaborative and creative endeavor. She is excited to serve as the graduate assistant for the Office of Fellowships this year, where she puts her love of working with her peers to use creating considered, effective, and—ultimately—successful writing. When not writing her dissertation, Maddie enjoys tending to her fish tanks, roller skating, and thrifting around Chicago.
