2026 Bok Awards for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates
Graduate students recognized for commitment to teaching and mentorship
Harvard Griffin GSAS is a place where students learn to be scholars, scientists, and researchers—those who create knowledge. Just as important, however, is the School’s role as a training ground for those who inspire others to learn and discover. The five recipients of the 2026 Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates exemplify these extraordinary young teachers and mentors.
Kyla Chasalow
Kyla Chasalow, a PhD student in statistics and teaching fellow (TF), is “the single best TF the department has had over the last five years,” according to her nominators, Joseph K. Blitzstein, professor of the practice in statistics, and Xiao-Li Meng, Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics.
Described as having “an almost preternatural ability to break subtle, counterintuitive topics down into bite-sized pieces,” Kyla has served as a TF for courses on causal inference, data science, data privacy, and more, and her students consistently credit her with their success in mastering complex concepts. A student in a causal inference course wrote that she is “easily the best TF I’ve ever had,” adding that she wrote “a 130-page note document for the class, effectively serving as a course textbook.” A data privacy student described how, during her office hours, Kyla “gave mini-lessons for any topics that I needed a refresher on” and helped fill the gaps between earlier coursework and the demands of an advanced class.
Faculty have witnessed her efforts firsthand in Statistics 188: Variational Information and Privacy and Statistics 288: Deep Statistics: Earth Observation and AI for Sustainability, both recently created courses on cutting-edge topics with no existing textbooks. Kyla volunteered to write lecture notes organizing the material as a skilled author would, with added examples, explanations, and pedagogical flow. Meng is now working with her to turn those notes into a full-fledged textbook. She holds both in-person and online office hours, anticipates students’ challenges, and grades transparently. This year, as the department’s Pedagogy Fellow, she is also helping prepare first-year PhD students to teach statistics.
Her nominators regard Kyla as “an extremely devoted and effective teaching fellow, or rather fellow teacher. Her students simply adore her.”
Kyla Chasalow, the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is pleased to present you with the Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates. Congratulations!
Luby Linden
Over the past three years, Luby Linden, a PhD student in classical philology, has taught and advised undergraduate classics students in many different ways. She has served as a teaching fellow (TF) for two General Education courses with large enrollments, taught introductory Greek and intermediate Latin, offered her own junior tutorial, co-advised two senior theses, and served as the department’s pedagogy fellow. Alexander Riehle, associate professor and director of graduate studies, and Naomi Weiss, professor and chair, report in their nomination that Luby earned “glowing feedback from both students and supervising faculty members” in every one of these roles.
Students consistently single out her discussion sections. In General Education 1131: Loss, taught by Professor Kathleen Coleman in spring 2025, a graduating senior called Luby “the best TF that I have had in any course across the College.” Coleman recalled sitting in on a section built around clips from the 2014 film Still Alice that “worked brilliantly”: Luby had students compare each clip with the corresponding scene in the book on which the movie was based, and they engaged the text “in unprecedented depth.”
Luby brings the same energy to language teaching. Her fall 2025 Latin 10: Introduction to Latin Literature course earned a perfect 5.0 from student evaluators, and one student wrote, “she cares deeply about each of her students and meets them where they are.” Ivy Livingston, senior preceptor in ancient Greek and classical Latin, observed that Luby was the first to bring AI-generated “tiered” texts into the classroom as scaffolding, and found it “very refreshing to see an intermediate Latin class that was not simply going round the room with one person reading and translating at a time.” As a pedagogy fellow, she also ran the department’s Classics Teaching Colloquium for new teachers.
In their nomination, Riehle and Weiss reiterate that Luby’s work demonstrates “dedication to pedagogical excellence and innovation, as well as her eagerness to grow continually as a teacher.”
Luby Linden, the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is pleased to present you with the Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates. Congratulations!
Julius Wilson
Julius Wilson has earned a reputation in the Department of Government for steady, thoughtful teaching under demanding conditions. In spring 2025, he served as the sole teaching fellow (TF) for GOVT 1338: Governance in Native America, a course offered as part of Harvard’s Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship. Enrollment surged to about five times the usual class size, and Julius still led each section “with dedication and skill,” with the goal to immerse students in working directly with particular communities, in this case, Native Americans and their governments, according to his nominator, Daniel Carpenter, Allie S. Freed Professor of Government and department chair.
The heart of the course is a trio of student projects conducted in tandem with Native Nations: an examination of the treaty-based history of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, a collaborative research project of Harvard’s relationship with the Chinook Nation, and work with Montana’s Office of American Indian Health and its efforts with Montana-based tribes. Julius oversaw all three collaborations on the Harvard side, met constantly with students and tribal partners to keep the work respectful and, in Carpenter’s words, “harnessed the energy and leadership of students themselves in leading team-based work.” One student wrote, “I seriously admire his commitment to this class.”
Carpenter describes Julius as “one of the most calm, sober, and thoughtful people I have ever met,” and he credits that steadiness with lowering students’ anxiety during a particularly stressful semester on campus. Julius brought the same temperament to GenEd 1092: American Society and Public Policy in fall 2025, the second time he served on the course’s TF team. Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, wrote that Julius has “a special ability to understand each individual student’s experience and perspectives,” and that his “calm and open-minded style” helps students navigate research questions in which clashing values may be at stake.
Julius Wilson, the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is pleased to present you with the Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates. Congratulations!
Hamlin Wu
From his first practice teaching session to his final review lecture, Hamlin Wu has distinguished himself as one of the most outstanding teaching fellows (TFs) his nominators have worked with at Harvard. Gregg Tucci, senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, and Wyatt Hurt, the department’s preceptor and curriculum and pedagogy manager, call him “an energetic and thoughtful TF” whose teaching has shaped courses for new students and upper-level concentrators alike.
Hamlin first stood out in Chemistry 301, a pedagogy seminar for first-year graduate students, where he explained the particle-in-a-box model of quantum mechanics with unusual clarity. His nominators gave him a rare “exceptional” rating and wrote, “Thorough and well-prepared, confident, and a charismatic teacher.” In spring 2025, as a TF for Physical Sciences 11, he memorized his students’ names before his first section and drew chalkboard diagrams that distilled complex topics to first principles. As one student wrote, “[Hamlin] was so clear when covering the material and answering any questions in our weekly sections.”
In fall 2025, Hamlin joined Chemistry 160, a quantum chemistry course that Assistant Professor Joonho Lee redesigned to demand greater academic rigor. “He acted as a true pedagogical partner,” Lee wrote, noting that Hamlin helped reshape the course before the semester began, designed section materials and supplementary guides, and even typed up Lee’s handwritten lecture notes for the class. Lee called him “the linchpin of a successful, high-stakes pedagogical experiment” that has elevated the standard of Chemistry 160.
Multiple students independently wrote to Lee to request Hamlin’s nomination, including junior Joy Xu, who said simply: “If anyone deserves the Bok award, Hamlin does.”
Hamlin Wu, the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is pleased to present you with the Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates. Congratulations!
Will Zong
Will Zong is “one of the most helpful TFs I have ever worked with” says Senior Preceptor in Chemical Engineering and Applied Materials Pia M. Sörensen of the teaching fellow (TF) and PhD student in applied physics. During fall 2025, Will taught two sections of General Education 1104: Science and Cooking, from Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science, and brought what Sörensen calls “tremendous care” to both. The culmination of his efforts was when one of his student teams won a science fair prize for best end-of-semester project, one of three winners among 43 teams.
According to his nominators, Will’s dedication extends well beyond scheduled hours. Time after time, after teaching the last section of the week, when the lab was at its most chaotic, he quietly stayed behind to clean, reorganize, and reset instruments, often before anyone could ask. Sörensen describes Will as someone who “seems almost constitutionally incapable of not helping,” and approaches “every responsibility, teaching, mentoring, cleaning, troubleshooting, as fully his job.” She writes, “If something needed doing, Will had already volunteered; if nothing needed doing, he would find something anyway.”
That helpfulness comes paired with genuine intellectual engagement. Will asked thoughtful questions to make sure students understood the material, and when a student raised a question in section, he followed up with a detailed, multipage write-up explaining the concept. Sörensen once stopped by the lab during extra hours and found a student team that had come to an impasse on its project, stressed and overwhelmed. She overheard Will patiently breaking down the science step by step, answering questions, and offering encouraging feedback. One of the students later told her that this turned things around, and that they could not have produced their final project without him.
“In every sense, Will is the paradigm of a TF,” Sörensen concludes: “generous with his time, meticulous in his work, and unfailingly willing to do whatever needs to be done.”
Will Zong, the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is pleased to present you with the Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates. Congratulations!
