Robert A. Lue

The Late Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director, Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

As a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Lue was responsible for fostering innovative teaching in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and elevating its profile on campus. Lue earned his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard and had taught undergraduate courses since 1988, garnering recognition as one of the University’s foremost leaders in undergraduate education.

Lue had a longstanding commitment to interdisciplinary teaching and research. From 2004 to 2015, he served as the director of life sciences education at Harvard, where he led a complete redesign of the introductory curriculum that created some of the largest and most popular science courses on campus.

In 2012, Lue’s extensive work on using technology to enhance learning took a new direction when he became the faculty director of HarvardX. At HarvardX, the university-wide initiative that includes the edX partnership in online education with MIT, Professor Lue helped shape the University’s engagement in online learning in a way that reinforces its commitment to teaching excellence and works to expand its reach and impact globally. In addition, as the now former faculty director of the Harvard Ed Portal, Lue oversaw the integration of undergraduate education with community outreach on Harvard’s Allston campus. Professor Lue passed away in 2020 and is thanked for his contribution to his academic field.

Adam G. Beaver

Director of Pedagogy, Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

As associate director for teaching and learning, Beaver works primarily with faculty and graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, and Gen Ed. Trained as a Renaissance historian, Beaver is especially attuned to what we can learn from the deep history of universities, including the different kinds of intellectual practices and communities that have inhabited them. Rather than see recent trends in higher education – from the digital revolution to the shift towards active learning techniques – as moments of rupture that render established practices (like lectures) obsolete, Beaver is interested in thinking with teachers about the best way to blend different kinds of techniques and exercises into a bespoke style that works for each individual instructor and course.

Before coming to Harvard’s Bok Center, Adam was an assistant professor of history at Princeton. He received his AB, AM, and Ph.D. from Harvard, as well as his MSt from the University of Oxford.

David Levari

Doctoral Student in Social Psychology, Department of Psychology, Harvard University

As a doctoral student in social psychology, Levari works on two main research projects: how context affects mental category boundaries, and the relationship between task performance and advice quality. Levari’s research has been funded by the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, and he was formerly a Departmental Teaching Fellow for the Psychology Department at Harvard University.

Pamela Pollock

Director of Professional Development, Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

With over a decade of experience in graduate student program development, Pollock provides leadership for many of Harvard Bok’s professional and scholarly development offerings for graduate students, including the Bok Seminars, the Bok Center Teaching Certificate, the Professional Communication Program for International Teachers and Scholars, and the Harvard Horizons mentoring program. She is passionate about scholarly communication, teaching, and learning. Pollock holds a Ph.D. in learning, teaching, and social policy from Cornell University, a MA in foreign language education from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in Spanish from Bryn Mawr College.