Faculty

Roberta Peirick

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John Pelletier

Biography

John is deeply committed to increasing the financial literacy of all of our citizens as Director of the Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College, since its creation in 2010. He has been a valued and credible, go-to source for the national conversation around financial education. John and the Center have been nationally recognized by the White House, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Financial Literacy Education Commission, the FDIC and the media for the Center’s unique teacher training programs, research, and advocacy.

John is an entrepreneurial minded business executive. Prior to working at the Center, John was chief operating officer and/or chief legal officer at some of the largest asset management firms in the United States, including Natixis Global Asset Management, Eaton Vance, and Funds Distributor, Inc. John has also worked at The Boston Company, Sidley Austin and Ropes & Gray as an attorney. John was the co-chair along with the Vermont State Treasurer of the Vermont Financial Literacy Commission and is currently an independent trustee of the Transamerica Mutual Fund Family and formerly an independent trustee of the Sentinel Funds. John has a law degree and an MA in public policy from Duke University.

What are your hobbies?

Running, Skiing, Nordic Skiing, and Hiking

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Beth Peloquin

Biography

Beth has been working with children, families and professionals in the Early Childhood Education (ECE) field since 1989, earlier if you count her babysitting jobs that started when she was nine. She earned her Masters in Special Education in 2000 and began working in Vermont that year in inclusive preschool classrooms. She spent 14 years in the classroom, all the while doing side gigs teaching in higher education, presenting on inclusive practices for ECE and ECSE professional organizations, and training and supporting other teachers with assessment, social and emotional practices, and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). She loves working with the education students at Champlain and tries to make her classes fun and experiential. Her favorite course is Math and Science for Young Children, closely followed by Preschool Curriculum – Play as Learning.

Outside Champlain, she owns an education training and consulting business, Pyramid 802 Plus, which helps teachers and ECE programs increase their social and emotional teaching practices. She also works with Teaching Strategies as a national trainer, supporting the Creative Curriculum and Teaching Strategies GOLD, which are curriculum and assessment systems used in Vermont and across the nation.

Publications & Abstracts

DEC Recommended Practices Monograph Series No. 2: Environment

Professional & Scholastic Affiliations

National Association for the Education of Young Children
Council for Exceptional Children Division for Early Childhood

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

The Power of Play by David Elkind

Favorite Quote

“Every child deserves a champion.”

—Rita Pierson

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Craig Pepin

Biography

Craig Pepin is the David F. Finney Chair for the Future of Professional Education, Lead Faculty in the Degree Design Lab and also a Professor in the Core Division. He earned a Ph.D. in European Intellectual History from Duke University, with a special interest in Modern Germany and the History of Higher Education. Teaching interdisciplinary inquiry-driven courses at Champlain led him to the importance of integrative learning in developing students who can think broadly and synthetically, and in particular, to the intersection between integrative thinking and learning assessment. Most recently his research and praxis has focused on competency-based education, particularly in a general education context, and on the history of General Education in the United States. He directs a $280,000 grant from the Davis Educational Foundation, “”Embedding the College Competencies at Champlain””.

He served as Assistant Dean for Assessment at Champlain for 12 years, and four years as President of the New England Educational Assessment Network. He has also consulted with other institutions on general education and assessment, and has served as an accreditation reviewer for the New England Commission of Higher Education. He has presented often at assessment conferences and at the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies. As chair of the College Competency Committee since 2014, he has facilitated the development of the Champlain College Competencies.

Professional & Scholastic Affiliations

• New England Educational Assessment Network
• Association for Interdisciplinary Studies

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

Watchmen (the novel). Ground breaking in its time, (I read the original comics when they came out in 1986), it holds up exceptionally well. It inverts and explores many of the tropes of superheroes and vigilantism, of conspiracy theories and power. The writing is razor sharp and the images are densely allegorical and intimately interwoven. The HBO miniseries of the same name (2019) is also great, transposing issues of race and policing in ways that again challenge our beliefs about what it means to be a hero. Both are brilliant.

Neal Stephenson’s Anathem is a work of science fiction that renders a richly drawn alternate reality that simultaneously steps through the most interesting thickets of classical Greek philosophy, and mashes it up with quantum mechanics. It is a novel of big ideas wrapped up in adventure, and appeals to everything I love about science fiction.

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Robin Perlah

Biography

Robin Perlah currently serves as Chair of the Creative Studio (home to Champlain’s creative art and design majors), Program Director for the graphic design (BFA) and interaction design (BS) majors, and is an Associate Professor in the Division of Communications and Creative Media at Champlain College.

In her time at Champlain, Perlah also served as the Academic Director for the Emergent Media Center, where she helped shape the creative vision for the campus-based interactive media studio. Additionally, Robin served as Assistant Dean for the CCM division, interim Program Director for creative media (BFA), and Program Director for the master’s programs in emergent media (MS and MFA). She has taught a wide range of courses in the areas of interaction design, photography, graphic design, and media theory, serving both undergraduate and graduate students. Currently, Robin teaches undergraduate courses in design history as well as photography, image-making, and visual design.

Perlah’s current art practice is based on a persistent interest in the photographic image, both still and moving, as it is transformed by digitality. Her work deals with the ambiguity of memory, the intersection between image capture (both analog and digital) and the methods of processing and presenting images, and how generative art and data mutations can reveal layers of complexity.

Before working at Champlain College, Robin was the co-chair of the Design & Creative Media program at the Center for Technology, Essex, and ran several community art programs to support young people through art-mentoring relationships and other activities. Prior to that, she had a long career as an art teacher and, professional photographer and photo editor, specializing in commercial, portrait, and event photography as well as fine-art printing.

Robin is a site evaluator for the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), is part of the volunteer board for PechaKucha Night (PKN) Burlington, and recently rejoined the board of trustees for the Vermont Arts Council as board secretary after finishing her last term as Vice-Chair in 2019. Additionally, she serves as the co-director for the Technology & Design Institute at Governor’s Institutes of Vermont. Robin earned a master of fine arts in emergent media from Champlain College, a bachelor of science in art education from the University of Vermont, and studied commercial and fine art photography at the New England School of Photography.

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Tony Perriello

Biography

Tony Perriello is a professor of law, criminology and criminal justice, Director of the Criminology and Criminal Justice program, and Assistant Dean of the School of Social Innovation. Tony practiced law in the private sector for two years before beginning a career in the legal and higher education publishing and media industries. During his publishing career, he developed and produced numerous legal casebooks and treatises covering many different subject and practice areas, as well college textbooks, educational technology and instructor resources across a broad spectrum of disciplines. Immediately prior to joining the faculty at Champlain College, he was a legal affairs reporter and editor at Bloomberg in Washington, D.C., where he covered the courts and several congressional committees. During his seven years in Washington, he was also a member of the adjunct faculty at American University, where he taught undergraduate courses in news writing and media law.

Professional & Scholastic Affiliations

• American Bar Association
• American Society of Criminology

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

• “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander
• “The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse” by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham
• “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson

Favorite Quote

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

—William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

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Denyse Perry

Biography

A dedicated contributor to a workplace and world that works for all, she is a former consumer packaged goods marketer and business leader. Presently she is a professional mediator, coach and part-time online adjunct faculty. She is a lifetime learner committed to continued formal education and observing what is happening in her areas of expertise and interest.

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

• Book: Nonviolent Communication; Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships, third edition, Dr. Marshall Rosenberg
• Book: The Myth of Normal; Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, Dr. Gabor Mate
• Book: Us; Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, Terrence Real

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Emily Peters

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Dan Petterson

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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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Robin Ploof

Biography

Robin’s long career of working with students includes teaching and mentoring across a spectrum that includes the very youngest learners as well as adults. She can still be found occasionally reading a story at Stepping Stones Children’s Center in Burlington, Vermont where she served as the Founding Director for 25 years. Robin was a literacy trainer for the Vermont Humanities Council for 20 years. She also served in various roles on the board of the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children, and is currently the Facilitator of NAEYC’s Play Policy and Practice Interest Forum. She is also a Master Play Coach certified by the Institute for Self-Active Education.

Publications & Abstracts

Connection Between Early Childhood Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices Regarding Play

Curriculum Vitae

READ MY CV

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Kimberly Polite

Biography

For the last 29 years, Dr. Kimberly Polite has built her career in business and Higher Education Administration as a leader in training and development, management, project management, sales, marketing, and team engagement. She is also a veteran.

Kimberly holds a doctorate in Business Administration from Walden University, a Master of Education in Management as well as a Bachelor of English, both from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She currently teaches and trains in business and educational organizations on strategic change management and employee engagement.

Her concentration areas include research on employee engagement and what factors contribute to increased engagement and productivity.

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Carla Ponti

Biography

Dr. Ponti has a PhD in music from University of California, San Diego and specializes in American popular music. She is currently adjunct faculty at the Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia and at National University online. Dr. Ponti is a classically trained soprano who has sung in the choruses of the San Diego Opera and Genesis Opera Company (among others) and has been a soloist and section leader for churches in Southern California.

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Raymond Presky

Biography

Ray is originally from London, England, and moved to the USA in 1979. Married since 1982, his wife is from Japan, they have 3 children, all of them have left home years ago, so he is an empty nester with extra time. He enjoys teaching at Champlain and like getting to know the students.

He was a self-employed store owner for 15 years, it was a lot of work, enjoyable but stressful. He considers himself fortunate to have fallen into networking and security engineering around 2000.

He is currently working for a large ISP and has been working in Networking, Security and Communications since 2000. He has worked with Telco, Fiber-Optic and Cable Companies and covered all aspects of networking and security from the user to the internet and lots in between.

Favorite Quote

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

—1 Corinthians 17:7

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