CENTRE FOR TEACHING
EXCELLENCE & INNOVATION
CENTRE FOR TEACHING
EXCELLENCE & INNOVATION

Team Members

Meet the CTEI Team! We are currently composed of our Director, our Senior Educational Developers, and our Educational Technologists.

For general inquiries, e-mail us at ctei@yorkvilleu.ca

Tommy Mayberry

Founding Director

Jenny Ge

Senior Educational Developer, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Matthew Dunleavy

Senior Educational Developer, Faculty Excellence and Development

Alisa Cunnington

Senior Educational Developer, Digital Pedagogies and Innovation

Yirong Wang

Educational Technologist

Tony Payment

Educational Technologist
Tommy Mayberry

Director

tmayberry@yorkvilleu.ca 

Tommy Mayberry (he/she/they) is the founding Director of our inaugural Centre for Teaching Excellence and Innovation here at Yorkville University and Toronto Film School. As an academic drag queen, they have published their work in numerous journals and edited volumes and have performed and presented their scholarship and research findings nationally as well as internationally. Tommy is co-editor (with Lindsay Bryde) of the award-winning book, RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning with RuPaul’s Drag Race (McFarland 2022) – and currently have an equity and justice focused follow-up “shequel” edition in the works, too! – and Tommy is also a recipient of the University of Waterloo’s Award for Exceptional Teaching (2015) as well as of the 2024 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship. They hold a PhD in English as well as an MA in English and Cultural Studies.

Jenny Ge with her dog River. Jenny is wearing black pants, a white top, and silver horn-rimmed glasses, and River has white fur with light-brown and grey patches and his tongue sticking out
Jenny Ge

Senior Educational Developer, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

jge@yorkvilleu.ca

Jenny Ge (she/her) is an educational developer and scholarly teacher with over 5+ years’ experience and a robust background in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), anti-racist pedagogies, and program evaluation. She completed her BEd and PhD in Education at Queen’s University, and holds a Credentialed Evaluator designation from the Canadian Evaluation Society. Her research explores teacher identity development across diverse contexts through narrative and arts-based methods. She occasionally lectures in the University of Toronto’s Master of Teaching program and is immediately joining our CTEI from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching where she was the Educational Developer, Research and Evaluation. Outside of work, she loves spending time with her two dogs, River and Sunday – River being pictured here with Jenny, and photos of Sunday are promised to come soon.

Matthew Dunleavy wearing a pink and purple polka-dot shirt under a grey blazer with red-framed glasses and a long reddish-brown beard smiling into the camera
Matthew Dunleavy

Senior Educational Developer, Faculty Excellence and Development

mdunleavy@yorkvilleu.ca 

Matthew Dunleavy (he/him) is an educational developer and scholarly teacher with over 9+ years’ experience. He immediately joins our CTEI from York University where he was an Educational Developer with the Teaching Commons; before entering that role, he served as the Program Director of the Online Learning and Technology Consultants (OLTC) Program at the Maple League of Universities (Acadia University; Bishop’s University; Mount Allison University; and St. Francis Xavier University). In 2022, he was awarded the D2L Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) for this work.

Alisa Cunnington in front of a mossy rock wall wearing a black and white leaf-printed long-sleeved top with a black shirt underneath, silver hoop earrings, and smiling into the camera.]
Alisa Cunnington

Senior Educational Developer, Digital Pedagogies and Innovation

acunnington@yorkvilleu.ca

Alisa Cunnington (she/her) is an educational developer and scholarly teacher with 6+ years in increasingly senior roles with educational technologies and over 25 years’ post-secondary education teaching experience in colleges and universities as well as with museums and art galleries. She immediately is joining our CTEI from Brock University’s Centre for Pedagogical Innovation where she was the Senior Educational Developer, Technology Enabled Learning, and she is looking forward to connecting with YU + TFS faculty and instructors about their relationships with technology and its integration and entanglement with their pedagogies. (Alisa welcomes conversations, too, about her artistic practice; her research and teaching about storytelling, museum studies, or studies in arts and culture; her love of hiking and exploration of the world near and far; and her deep commitment to situating herself as a settler in a colonized nation and to all things anti-oppressive.)  

Yirong Wang

Educational Technologist

ywang@yorkvilleu.ca

Yirong Wang (she/her) holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Educational Technology as well as a Master of Education (MEd) in Adult Education. Yirong brings a diverse academic background to her role as Educational Technologist at Yorkville University and Toronto Film School. Providing expert guidance on technology selection and incorporation, Yirong is committed to enhancing technology-enabled teaching practices for diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility. Yirong is also responsible for planning, developing, and delivering targeted faculty development programs on pedagogical strategies with approved educational technologies. Driven by a passion for advancing educational technologies and digital pedagogical innovation, Yirong engages with emerging tech trends and conducts institution-level research to facilitate transformative teaching and learning experiences for achieving our signature learning outcomes.

Tony has long blonde hair over their shoulders and is wearing a black turtlenecked t-shirt with a thin gold chain necklace.
Tony Payment

Educational Technologist

tpayment@yorkvilleu.ca

Tony Payment (they/them) is a recent graduate of Brock University’s Game Design MA, whose research focuses on the linking of scholarship to design and development. They have previously served as a training coordinator at MacDon Industries, as well as a teaching assistant at Brock university. With experience in employee training and a passion for teaching and connecting with students and educators, they hope to bring a unique, creative perspective to YU + TFS and the CTEI.