Maliki LaForce

Kinsey Bowensmith

Favorite Class

Production II

What do you like about your program?

The professors are great and really willing to work with you on your growth as a professional. The classes are applicable as you go through your major, so you can apply what you learn right away in your work in teams. The projects are interesting and help put everything I learn into a real-world context.

What do you like about your professors at Champlain?

They are always ready and willing to work with you on whatever you need. They remember your name and can remember what you said in class that day. They are knowledgeable on the subjects that they teach and help you grow as a young professional.

What projects have you worked on in classes that you’ve found particularly rewarding or useful?

All of my production work in teams has been irreplaceable in learning how teams and game projects work. You are able to work in a studio setting, which helps put the whole process in a context that would not be there otherwise.

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Donovan Garcia-Buckler

Favorite Class

Advanced Seminar

Tell us a bit about your experience in the Game Studio!

I love that my major allows me to collaborate with other game developers as soon as possible to make games with the guidance of amazing professors. I also have benefited from taking some advanced seminars and connecting with amazing industry professionals.

What do you like about going to college in Burlington?

Everyone here is super friendly and Burlington is such a walkable city. The best thing about it is that you can just explore and find a cool shop or cafe tucked away in a spot that you hadn’t seen before.

What projects have you worked on in classes that you’ve found particularly rewarding or useful?

The game projects that I have had in my Production classes have been the most rewarding for me. Not because we made games in that class, although that was still pretty great, but because of the experience I got from working with other people and building some amazing connections. Those soft skills of collaboration are much more important to me than just making games.

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Alexa Gardner

Advice to Students?

Keep a personal homework schedule too, don’t trust Canvas for all the due dates.

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Evan Gartner

Internship

Project Management for Champlain’s Marketing Department

Favorite Class

Introduction to Game Production Management

What have you gained from Core? Has it changed your perspective?

Core has helped me to improve my reading and writing skills. It’s really changed my perspective of the world. Many of my Core classes have covered world issues and cultures, helping me to better understand that subject matter. My favorite Core class has to be the Reading, Writing, and Pop Culture class from the fall of my first year. The class was fun and very engaging because of Division of Information Technology & Sciences focus on protest songs written throughout history, which had a great impact on pop culture, and that really interested me.

What do you think about InSight? Why is it valuable, practical, or relevant?

The InSight program is a very useful program for helping students find jobs or internships. It’s very valuable because in addition to being used by current students, alumni can use it as a resource as well if they need assistance finding a job after graduating. The milestone that’s been the most rewarding to me is my LinkedIn submission. Getting a perfect score and receiving positive feedback from a peer career coach significantly boosted my confidence in succeeding with my job hunt.

Looking back, what advice would you give a new or incoming Champlain student? What might the high school version of you think about the current you today?

An important piece of advice I would give to a new or incoming student would be to always ask for help when you need it. I had a particularly stressful Spring 2022 semester. However, because I asked for help from my professors, counselors, and doctors, I was able to get through it and get on a great path. I feel like my high school self would be proud of all that I have accomplished in my first year and a half of college. He would probably tell me to keep it up, just like my teachers, professors, co-workers, family, and friends have all told me to do.

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Leah Gimbutas

Favorite Class

Corporate Social Responsibility.

How has the Upside-Down Curriculum enhanced your education?

With the upside-down curriculum, I’ve had a huge jump start in marketing myself as a young professional. I’m able to tell potential employers about my interactive experiences with project management and facilitating team work ahead of many other underclassmen.

What Extracurricular activities are you involved in? What do you do/why do you enjoy them?

I love participating in the Global Game Jam. It’s an incredibly manic weekend where you make a game with your favorite people, and figure out very quickly if your discipline is the right match for you. For me, it was the perfect sign that I really did love game production.

What advice do you have for students thinking about coming to Champlain for college?

If you have a genuine passion for something, and you want a school to support those goals. Champlain is the perfect school for you. It really is incredible how much focus there is on what major you decide on. Ambition is such an important characteristic for a student here!

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Chris McCammon

Internship

Lead Producer at the Emergent Media Center in Burlington, VT

What made you choose to attend Champlain?

I used to have a gaming YouTube channel with 60,000 subscribers. I filmed a Minecraft video of me trying on the Oculus Dev 1, which is a virtual reality (VR) headset. I remember thinking it was so cool that you could be immersed in these virtual worlds. I started imagining what stories you could tell in VR. That’s why I really wanted to come to Champlain. It’s cool to access that immersive technology and learn how to use it.

What projects have you worked on during your time here?

Junior year, my team worked on a game called Snowball Showdown in our production class. It was a wacky VR snowball fighting game, but the cool thing was that we got accepted to the Oculus Start program. So Oculus gave us free VR headsets and invited us to Oculus Connect 6 in San Jose, California, which is an annual VR convention for the whole industry. We didn’t go as students, but as developers, which was really cool. We’re working to publish Snowball Showdown in the Oculus store, which is at the forefront of VR games.

What did you do in Montreal when you studied abroad?

I interned at Casa Rara, which is a tiny VR game studio. The company had a staff of five people—plus me. I had my own desk, and we all collaborated together in one room. My boss was away a lot of the time, so I worked as the producer of the team for a while. It was a really cool experience to work in the role I’m hoping to get hired for in the future.

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Austin Roorda

Internship

Behavior Interactive

What was it like to study abroad in Montreal?

Studying abroad in Montreal was fantastic. I would definitely say it’s probably the highlight of my time here at Champlain in many ways. I worked as a Project Manager Intern at Behavior Interactive on their mobile division. I worked on an unreleased game, which is currently still in development, called Game of Thrones Beyond The Wall. I worked on that as a Project Manager, tracking tasks, and being a facilitator of discussion and communication between the team. I was also just a person of contact and point of reference for pretty much any questions the team had. I’d get them to talk to who they needed to.

What is your favorite tool to get things done?

For getting things done as a Producer and Project Manager, you have a bunch of task tracking software and communication facilitators such as Matter Most or Discord. I’ve found food is extremely effective. Being able to sit people down at a work session and say, “Hey, I brought food. Please eat this food and then do those things that we said that we should probably do to make sure that we actually don’t crunch.” Super effective. Also, having a smile and a pleasant disposition is pretty good, too.

Are you scrum certified?

So I’m Scrum certified, which means that I’ve been certified as a Scrum master through Clint Keith and the Scrum Alliance. And that basically means that I can facilitate team progress and a team workflow by making it so we reevaluate and iterate whatever we’re making on a week-by-week basis or a case-by-case, sprint-by-sprint basis. That just allows us to be more efficient in what we’re making. And it’s a better way than just doing it the traditional old fashioned way from start to end.

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Amy Zebrowski

Favorite Class

Heroines & Heroes: Harry Potter

What is the best part about your program?

The team-based projects in production classes have you working on creating games right away, which is great. The professors are knowledgeable and willing to help you learn, while also giving you valuable critiques to guide you in the right direction. The Game Studio feels like a family-we all help each other be the best we can be.

What projects have you worked on in classes that you’ve found especially rewarding?

Getting to work on games in production classes and major-specific classes right away has been the most useful thing I’ve gotten to do at Champlain. Growing my skills as a game developer has been so rewarding and has gotten me excited about my career after Champlain.

What advice do you have for students thinking about coming to Champlain?

I highly recommend Champlain to anyone in high school who feels like they don’t fit in. You’ll find your place here, and having people in your corner will make a difference in your experience here.

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