Faculty for Game Programming Major

Scott Barrett

Biography

Scott Barrett is an alumnus of Champlain College who is delighted to be pursuing his passion of teaching. He worked at Ubisoft Montréal for 5 years in a variety of roles, including as a network programmer, as a gameplay programmer, and as a tools programmer. He has worked on teams as small as under a dozen people to as large as several hundred people. He has experience with both Unity and with proprietary game engines.

Scott’s teaching philosophy centers around helping students achieve their goals by working with them collaboratively and with honesty. He teaches physics, networking, and game engine courses, and he has a particular interest in low-level and systems programming. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Science in Computer Science at the University of Vermont part-time while teaching at Champlain College full-time.

Distinctions & Awards

Awarded a gift grant by Activision for educational work at Champlain

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

Practical Creativity by Raph Koster

An excellent talk for game developers of any kind, and for anyone working in any creative field. Includes practical advice on how to be creative, and also includes a different way of looking at what it means for different works to share a genre.

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Daniel Buckstein

Biography

Originally from the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, Daniel Buckstein holds degrees in Computer Science and in Game Development & Entrepreneurship. He has a keen interest various areas of mathematics, including calculus and linear algebra, which carry over to computer animation algorithms and graphics programming. His other development interests include low-level game engine and tool design, virtual reality, and augmented reality; these have been demonstrated in both industry and academic contexts. His passion for programming intertwines with his passion for teaching and he is always looking for innovative and fun ways to deliver course content.

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

Ray Tracing in One Weekend

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Wei Kian Chen

Biography

Wei Kian Chen received his Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1996, 1998, and 2005, respectively.

His research interests are Association Mining, Classification, Data Mining, Database, Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition, Software Engineering and others.

He is an active member of ACM, IEEE, SIGCSE and CCSC. In addition, he is also a member of the International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Disciplines (Upsilon Phi Epsilon) and the Honor Society for International Scholars (Phi Beta Delta).

Distinctions & Awards

2020 Edward R. Lyman Professorship

Publications & Abstracts

• Predictive high-level feature representation based on dictionary learning
• Applying software engineering in CS1

Professional & Academic Affiliations

• Association for Computing Machinery
• Special Interest Group Computer Science Education
• Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers
• Upsilon Pi Epsilon International Honor Society for the Computing & Information Disciplines
  
• Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars

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Samara Fantie

Biography

Samara Fantie is a game developer and artist currently based in Vermont. Her robust background in the sciences includes an MA from American University in Mathematics and a BA with distinction from Amherst College in Psychology and Mathematics.

Leveraging a lifelong love of art, games, and interactive narratives, Samara has accumulated over a decade of experience helping people tell their stories. Her portfolio spans a wide array of projects including visual development, comics, 3D modeling, illustration, and many other flavors of game-related art and design. She has collaborated with a diverse range of clients including neuroscientists, indie developers, and Unity, showcasing her versatility and expertise in both technical and artistic domains. Her passion for the craft and innovative adaptability have enabled her to consistently deliver compelling creative solutions that resonate with audiences.

As co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of game studio Glossbird, Samara brings a unique blend of analytical rigor and creative vision to the gaming industry. Prior to teaching at Champlain College, she taught graduate-level courses at American University’s Game Lab for their Master of Arts in Game Design program.

Distinctions & Awards

• a16z TxO f’23 Accelerator Cohort
• PocketGamer- Most Innovative Mobile Game of the Year Finalist
• SmithMicro- The Avatar Challenge Design Contest

Publications & Abstracts

A Burlington Game Developer Hopes to Hit It Big With ‘Fitment’

Professional/ Scholastic Affiliations

Recommended Reading

Mrs. Davis

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Jonathan Ferguson

Biography

Jonathan Ferguson, Assistant Professor, Game Design and Game Production, Division of Communications and Creative Media at Champlain College is a Game Designer and software freedom advocate. Prof. Ferguson has over 27 years of technology development experience, spanning careers in Cybersecurity, Software Development, Game Development, and Teaching. Prof. Ferguson maintains particular interests in free and open source software, game technology, game history and game preservation and access. Prof. Ferguson holds a Masters of Science in Managing Innovation in Information Technology from Champlain College.

Prof. Ferguson is the creator of the Game History Collection at Champlain College. The mission of the Game History Collection is to preserve and provide access to historical games for study and play. This requires ongoing preservation and maintenance of game software, hardware and online platforms needed to replicate the experiences of historical games. Providing access to past experiences drives the preservation efforts of the Game History Collection in The Game Studio at Champlain College. The GHC offers access to thousands of games for students to study and play, providing direct access to original hardware, emulated games, and hardware-reimplementation.

Since 2009, Prof. Ferguson has served as the Faculty Advisor for the 3 hours weekly project-based Free and Open Source Technology Club (FOTC) at Champlain College, offering weekly opportunities to explore and discuss software and hardware freedom. Over the 2022-2023 academic year, students built a small-scale (Beowulf) compute cluster, and learned about Amateur Radio and Electronics.

Prof. Ferguson also supervises the Games Testing Lab in The Game Studio at Champlain College. Games Testing Lab typically runs five sessions of Games Testing per week, supporting testing options for Personal Computer, Mobile, Virtual Reality and physical prototypes.

Prof. Ferguson is also the Faculty advisor for the Juggling Club and the Destiny 2 Club.

Distinctions & Awards

2021 John Lavallee Innovation Award

Professional & Scholastic Affiliations

• ACM
• IEEE
• AAAS
• IGDA

Curriculum Vitae

READ MY CV

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Brian Hall

Biography

By education and trade, he is a programmer and engineer. His academic interests are interdisciplinary. He is a technologist who chooses to think critically about technology and encourages others to do the same.

Publications & Abstracts

You can read more about my work at https://www.brianrhall.com.

You can find my code projects at https://github.com/brianrhall.

Curriculum Vitae

READ MY CV

Favorite Quote

“If you want to increase your success rate”¦double your failure rate.”

—T.J. Watson

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Dean Lawson

Biography

Dean Lawson has worked in the Games Industry for nearly 30 years, primarily as a Programmer but also as a Designer, Project Lead, and Director of Programming.

He has worked on 14+ shipped titles, including SimCity Societies, Caesar IV, Majesty, Risk: Global Domination, a number of online board game conversions for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, and World of Zoo and Club Penguin: EPF: Herbert’s Revenge on the Nintendo DS for THQ and Disney Interactive, respectively. Throughout his career, Dean has focused on game AI and how it helps shape the player experience.

Dean’s other main passion in games is Game Architecture; how to engineer flexible technical frameworks for games. Dean advises at the EMC at Champlain College, as well as working as a contract programmer for a number of game and educational companies. Dean has been teaching at Champlain College since 2010: he previously taught Game Programming and Design at Savannah College of Art and Design.

Dean Lawson earned a BS in Computer Science from Union College in Schenectady, NY and an M.Ed in Secondary School Mathematics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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Kyle Patterson

Biography

Kyle graduated from Champlain College in 2016 with a degree in Game Production Management and has worked at various game and tech companies such as Zynga, Warner Bros Games, Disney Interactive, Jam City, and Snapchat. He is a part time adjunct professor at Champlain focused on supporting the Game Studio.

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

• Agile Game Development with Scrum by Clinton Keith
• Horus Rising -1 – The Horus Heresy by Dan Abnett
• Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry by Jason Schreier

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John Pile Jr

Biography

John Pile Jr is a Technical Director and Principal Engineering Manager at Schell Games. Previously a full-time professor for Champlain College, John now teaches as an adjunct faculty for the Game Studio.

John has a deep background in digital entertainment, video games, and interactive story-telling experiences for PCs, Mobile, Game Consoles, and specializes in MR / VR / XR. He is the author of “2D Graphics Programming for Games” and has presented at the Game Developer Conference on topics in computer graphics education.

Publications & Abstracts

2D Graphics Programming for Games

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Andersen Pinckney

Biography

Andersen is a Game Design graduate from Champlain College’s class of 2020. He has worked as an aerospace software engineer for Saber Astronautics, a project manager for the DoD, and in production for Rockstar Games. He has been an adjunct professor for Champlain College since Fall 2021.

Favorite Quote

“Shake and bake, baby!”

–Ricky Bobby

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Alexandre Tolstenko

Biography

Alex is an experienced senior software developer who joined Champlain College in 2022. With over 15 years in the software industry, Alex has a diverse background as a software, game, blockchain, and reliability engineer, having held various positions including developer, architect, and CTO in startups. Throughout their career, Alex has delivered successful products to the market, accumulating over 250 million downloads.

Alex specializes in game development, general problem-solving, algorithms, product delivery, and team building. Some notable deliveries include implementing multiplayer networking and physics determinism for racing games, developing blockchain technology and IaaC for an NFT-based crowdfunding platform, and porting a game engine (including physics) from ObjectiveC to multiple platforms.

Originally from Brazil, Alex enjoys sports, learning new skills, and exploring emerging tech trends. They hold a BS in Computer Engineering from UNICAMP and an MS in Computer Science from UFPI, both in Brazil.

Distinctions & Awards

Unity Awards Finalist 2012;
Best paper award on SAE Aerodesign 2014;
Best paper award on international Coloproctology journal 2017
Featured Startup on Innovativa Brazil 2018;

Publications & Abstracts

Awesome GameDev Resources

Favorite Quote

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”

—Walt Disney

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Peter Wehr

Biography

Peter Wehr has been an Adjunct and Instructor at Champlain College since 2011 teaching Game History and Game Production. Working mostly with first and second-year students, Wehr works very closely with student game production teams teaching them to function effectively to implement their game concepts.

Wehr has worked in academia and the entertainment industry for over four decades specializing in project management and developing infrastructure for new technologies for museums, games, film, television, CR-ROM, DVD, kiosks, and the web. Wehr has been fortunate to work with a variety of industry leaders such as the Smithsonian, HBO, PBS, the Rolling Stones, Sony, CBS, Pepsi, and Dilbert. While working in NYC in the independent television and film postproduction industry, Wehr created a reputation for taking on untraditional and unusual media projects. As one coworker pointed out to him “Whenever you are in a launch meeting, I know it is going to be an interesting ride.”

In his spare time, Wehr plays and coaches soccer, hikes, kayaks, Nordic skis, and snowboards, dabbles with Arduino and Raspberry Pi, reads history, and listens to a wide variety of music.

Curriculum Vitae

READ MY CV

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Eric Winebrenner

Biography

Eric Winebrenner has always been fascinated by videogames as a unique medium that combines art, design, and technology. A founding member of local Vermont game studios, he has shipped successful commercial independent games as well as educational games that make a meaningful positive impact on the world. As a teacher, he believes that programming is a skill that empowers students to forge their own future, and constantly strives to make it accessible through innovative pedagogy. He is particularly interested in realtime rendering, game engine architecture, UI/UX, and gameplay programming.

Favorite Quote

“You can’t learn everything, but you have to convince yourself that you can learn anything.”

—John Carmack

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