Meet the Team

Monique Taylor

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Cyndi Brandenburg

Biography

Dr. Brandenburg is a trained neuroscientist who began teaching traditional lab science courses at Champlain College in 1999. With the initiation of Champlain’s Interdisciplinary Core in 2007, she shifted roles and started teaching an array of integrated and inquiry-based courses that are arguably quite different from her more traditional academic roots. As a result, she became particularly interested in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in general, and Interdisciplinarity and Integration in particular, with an eye towards fusing such seemingly disparate fields as the Sciences and the Humanities. She is a strong advocate for the importance of scientific literacy to society, and believes that the phrase “scientific literacy” needs to be understood in far more culturally nuanced and contextually meaningful ways than it typically has been in the past. Her current career focus includes how to make science skills more applicable and accessible to a broad range of students through hands-on, interdisciplinary, and inclusive pedagogies and curricular innovation. Most recently, she helped co-design a new degree program offered by the Degree Design Lab that is interdisciplinary, customizable, and predicated on experiential and project-based learning, and she is currently collaborating on the development of more innovative science-focused degree options for Champlain.

Distinctions & Awards

Edward Phelps Lyman Professorship Award

Publications & Abstracts

• Integration as the New (General Education)
• Scientific Literacy Redefined

Curriculum Vitae

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Michael Kelly

Biography

Mike Kelly is Rhetoric professor turned Interdisciplinary Studies expert whose classroom teaching style aims to serve as a bastion of respectful inquiry and relationship-building amidst a global backdrop of bad-faith discursive practices and people being otherwise horrible to one another. As a Lyman Professor award-winner in 2022-23, Mike is a lead faculty in Champlain’s Degree Design Lab and teaches an assortment of courses in the Core Division as well.

While the subject matter of Mike’s courses range from horror movies to the rhetoric of professionalism, they all offer students a variety of academic experiences that sit on the edge of disciplinary boundaries that prepare students to be adaptable thinkers who can move fluidly across a variety of academic and professional contexts.

Outside the classroom, Mike has held a series of leadership positions at Champlain, including Faculty Senate President, academic program review committee chair and NECHE accreditation specialist. He lives in South Burlington with his wife Jamie, three teenage sons and two rescue mutts.

Distinctions & Awards

2022 Edward Phelps Lyman Professor, Champlain College, $5000
2017 Perry Innovation Fellow, Champlain College, $5000

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

• The Wire – This show works because it forces the viewer to understand Baltimore’s civic problems as inherently interconnected. People who appreciate this show tend to do well in my courses because they are able to see how pieces of an interdisciplinary puzzle fit together.
• The National – this band’s songs illustrate the unique complications of what it means to be human in original ways.

Curriculum Vitae

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Stephen Robinson

Biography

Dr. Stephen Robinson is a British born, Canadian raised and educated environmental geoscientist with a PhD from McGill University (2000). Since 2008 he has been working in international education in Ireland as Director and Professor at Champlain College’s Dublin Campus. Stephen previously held the Chapin Chair in Geology at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He is co-founder and board member of ASAPI, the Association of Study Abroad Providers in Ireland, and co-founder and Chair of EUASA, the European Association of Study Abroad. He is passionate about climate action and sustainability in study abroad.

Stephen recently acted as Guest Editor of a Special Issue of Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad. The Special Issue, due for release in early 2025, is titled US Study Abroad: The View from Europe, and features 3 papers co-authored by Robinson.

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Genevieve Lord

Biography

With a background in programming, IT, and international business, complemented by an MBA from McGill University, Geneviève was previously an IT consultant and director for 11 years while living in five countries. She then became a game producer and senior game director for Ubisoftand A2M (Behaviour) in Montréal. In 2008, she became the Director of the Montreal branch of the Champlain College of Vermont.

Geneviève’s special interests are coaching and all applications of convergent media. When not working, she can be found in a good book, European BD, or playing video and board games with her (very tall) children. She is committed to helping students reach their full potential by harnessing the effects of new technologies.

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Ellen Zeman

Biography

Ellen has been a member of the Office of the Provost at Champlain College since 2004 in a variety of roles. Her work includes program learning outcomes assessment, survey oversight and administration, curriculum design and support, institutional research, accreditation liaison and self-study, and program review. Before joining Champlain, Ellen worked as a science writer and editor. She has a BS in Chemistry from the University of Vermont and a PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern University, where she conducted research on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

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Tara Arneson

What are your hobbies?

Snowboarding, mountain biking, knitting

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