Faculty

John Billingsley

Biography

John has diverse broadcast and media production experience, having worked in various capacities in television, radio, film and music production. Early in his career, he spent many years working in the music business in New York City while on staff at two major recording studios, Quad Studios and Looking Glass Studios. During this time, John worked on and received engineering credits on many major label releases, including albums by Phillip Glass, Nils Lofgren and Phish. Later, as a freelance audio engineer in New York, he worked for a variety of television stations and independent production companies, including MTV, VH1, The Oxygen Network and Giants Football Broadcasting.

More recently, John spent a decade working as a producer and production engineer at Vermont Public where he recorded, edited and mixed audio for broadcast and podcasts on a daily basis. In addition to producing audio content, he created videos for the station’s website. John developed and produced a music video performance series titled Live From The Fort that ran for 5 years, garnishing over 100,000 views on Youtube. He also developed, produced and occasionally hosted, a weekly series titled Safe and Sound, that focused on Vermont musicians.

Through his production company, Breadbox Productions, John have produced several documentaries. One feature documentary he co-produced, directed and wrote, Liemba, tells the story of Africa’s oldest operational ship which plies the waters of Lake Tanganyika. He has also written, performed and mixed the musical scores for several independent productions. Through the use of midi, samples and virtual instruments, he composes in styles ranging from hip-hop to classical.

John received a Bachelor of Arts from St. Lawrence University and a Master of Arts in Media Studies from The New School.

Publications & Abstracts

Liemba

Favorite Quote

“Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

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Miranda Blaiklock

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Robert Bloch

Biography

Arguably, Robert Bloch has had three careers. He “retired” in 2019, but for the twelve years prior, he had been mentoring and supporting student entrepreneurs, both commercial and social, as Director of Champlain College’s innovative BYOBiz (Build Your Own Business) program, precursor to today’s CIE, and teaching in the Stiller School. Robert’s first career was in the corporate world beginning with eight years in brand management at General Foods and later as the Chief Marketing and Sales Executive worldwide for both Four Seasons Hotels and Marriott. This was followed by eight years as an entrepreneur, starting two companies, one successful the other not so much.

Robert has three grown children and four grandchildren. He enjoys motorcycling, the outdoors, golf, gardening, teaching and renovating a home with my wife Nancy. He holds a BA in Government from Cornell University and a MBA from Harvard University.

Robert is very excited about getting to know you and helping you explore the fascinating world of business and your potential role in that world.

Favorite Quote

“Be the ball.”

—Ty Webb

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Pat Boera

Biography

A former New Yorker who adopted Vermont as “home,” Pat Boera is an enthusiastic member of the Champlain College Career Collaborative team.

As a University of Vermont graduate who majored in Marketing, Pat uses her expertise every day to help students and alumni market themselves to prospective employers. She worked in the Hospitality Industry out of college, spending time on the management team of two of Vermont’s leading properties—The Tyler Place Family Resort and the historic Middlebury Inn. With this background, she strives to provide five-star service to the varied constituents who are her “customers”—students, alumni, colleagues, employers, and community members. Pat was honored by her Champlain College colleagues with selection as the first recipient of the Elizabeth Durick Staff Service Award.

Pat works hard and plays hard. When she’s not working at her office in the Garden House, popping into classes to present workshops, assisting with InSight initiatives, planning a Career Ed*Venture or Signature Event, or helping facilitate the Annual Elevator Pitch Competition, you are likely to find Pat dedicating time to favorite community activities in Burlington and Middlebury. She has been a volunteer with Lyric Theatre Company since college days, working in nearly every behind-the-scenes aspect of productions. She was a longtime House Captain at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts; is a trained Audio-Describer who helps blind and visually-impaired audience members “see” performances; and helped found the award-winning Middlebury Summer Festival on-the-Green.

Pat has been recognized for service with two special awards—The Middlebury College Citizens Medal and as a United Way Hometown Heroes Nominee—and she hopes that this involvement makes her a good role model for Champlain College students and alumni. Pat can’t go a day without reading. She also dabbles in artisan crafts, specifically calligraphy and silk-screening and loves to be in the audience at live theater performances every chance she gets.

What are your hobbies?

Volunteering, reading, calligraphy, silk-screening

Favorite local eateries and things to do in Vermont:

Favorite eateries: Warner’s Snack Bar on the St. Albans-Swanton Road; Rosie’s Restaurant in Middlebury. Favorite things to do in Vermont: Exploring Vermont’s cities and towns as part of the Vermont 251 Club; attending live theater performances with friends

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Cullen Bostock

Biography

Cullen has been with Champlain College since 2014. He currently serves as Data Systems Manager for Champlain College. In this role, Cullen serves as the system administrator for the College’s primary internal reporting tools, Informer by Entrinisk and the Edify data lake. He also works closely with various functional areas to ensure report needs are being met which includes assisting with report and dashboard construction, data management, analysis and visualization. Prior to this role, he served as Quality Assurance Coordinator and Data Analyst at the College, specifically for Champlain College Online. Cullen has B.S. in Marketing from Central Connecticut State University and over 7 years experience utilizing Python and other programming languages to extract, clean, transform, and visualize data to inform decisions and solve problems.

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Kelly Bowen

Biography

Kelly A. Bowen is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Core Division. Before Champlain College, Kelly worked in global trade assisting companies to identify opportunities and expand in emerging markets. As an International Trade Director for The Massachusetts Port Authority, she also led delegations of American manufacturers on Gubernatorial Trade Missions. Kelly managed offices in Jerusalem, Berlin, Derry, and Warsaw.

Time abroad fostered a love of the arts. Switching to the right brain, Kelly left business to pursue creative writing. She earned an M.F.A. at Goddard College.

Kelly champions experiential learning within an interdisciplinary framework. Her passion is empowering students (or clients) to uncover personal strengths and recognize their potential:

“Only after examining the self can we place ourselves in the context of a wider world. Critical thinkers evolve through this self-examination and encouragement.”

A Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, her work has been featured in Creative Nonfiction Magazine, The Huffington Post, Healthy Women, The Fiction Advocate, Vermont Digger, USA Today, and others. Her recent poem Dress Code was published in the Military Review Poetry Reader: Global War on Terrorism, 2001-2021 Anthology. Her essay Mystic Trinities received a notable mention in the 2022 edition of Best American Essays.

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John Boyd

Biography

Boyd started teaching at Champlain College in the fall of 2012. He teaches multiple topics within the Game Design curriculum including game design, system design, and level design.

As a game designer, he helped develop eight titles on a variety of development platforms including PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Notable titles include: Rage (Xbox 360, PS3, PC), Ghostbusters: The Video Game (Xbox 360, PS3), Kinect Star Wars (Xbox 360), Medal of Honor: Airborne (Xbox 360), Luxor3 (PC), and Sin Episodes: Emergence (PC).

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Dean Boyer

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David Boyle

Biography

Born in Philadelphia (Go Eagles!) and raised in Vermont. Joined the Vermont Army National Guard at 18 and which became a career. Deployed twice in support of the Global War on Terrorism with one in Kuwait and one in Afghanistan. Retired from the military after more that 26 years in service (23 of them on Active Duty). Currently assigned as a clinician at the college’s counseling center.

Holds two Masters Degrees, one in Administration and one in Clinical Psychology, both from St. Michael’s College. Worked in the mental health field for over 13 years. First clinical experience in the field was working in a Combat Stress Control Clinic in Afghanistan treating service members with mental health issues. Other relevant clinical experience is in both community mental health (in crisis and drug addiction issues) and in private practice.

Distinctions & Awards

Bronze Star Medal
Army Meritorious Service Medal 2nd Award
Army Commendation Medal 5th Award
Army Achievement Medal 4th Award

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

• The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
• The Gettysburg Address

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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

READ MY CV

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Kevin Braun

Biography

Kevin Braun is a UX design leader, speaker, educator, and author with 30 years of industry experience. The work he has done has helped improve user experiences for world-class companies including Google, Samsung, Rolex, Hyundai, Michael Kors, MIT, Harvard, Cisco Systems, and PADI. He has also worked with industry leaders in healthcare, insurance, automotive, mobile devices, and consumer goods.

Publications & Abstracts

From Chaos to Concept: A Team Oriented Approach to Designing World Class Products and Experiences

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Nathan Braun

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Mallory Breiner

Biography

Mallory Breiner makes painting, sculpture and installation that collage visual language from art history, film, found internet images and personal photographs to investigate ideas about gender, motherhood, labor, emotions and art-making. She received her MFA from Hunter College (New York, NY) in combined media in 2014 and her BA in Fine Arts and English Literature from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont in 2007. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of Art at Champlain College and Saint Michael’s College in Burlington, Vermont.

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Kristian Brevik

Biography

Kristian Brevik is an artist, scientist, and educator, who works to bring together artistic practice, ecology+evolutionary science, and the environmental humanities into collaborative research and art exploring the ways the lives of humans and other beings are entangled. They research relationships between humans and insects using genetics and computational biology, teach science, art and the humanities in academic and community classes, write on the theory and practice of building kinship with other species, and create artwork in the form of large interactive installations, collaborative performance, and short zines on relationships between humans and others in the community of life. They seek to find ways that art and life can help to foster a sense of deep connectedness with the nonhuman kin with whom we share the world. Their large, participatory art installations are rooted in the places and ecologies they represent.

Publications & Abstracts

PUBLICATIONS & ABSTRACTS

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

• BCA Artist Studio Tour: Kristian Brevik
• @kbrevil_whalefall on Instagram

Curriculum Vitae

READ MY CV

Favorite Quote

Malheur Maar: A hole in black ground. Steep cliff walls round. A ring of tall green reeds under the walls around the water. Some small people sit here and there silently on the cliffs among rabbitbrush and sagebrush. Some small people silently climb up my pants leg. In the round water are the reeds and the walls and some of the people and the wind moving and the silence.

—Ursula K. LeGuin

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Melanie Brown

Biography

Dr. Melanie Brown is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and has been teaching at Champlain College since 2013. She is also the Program Director for Mathematics and oversees not only the major in Applied Mathematics and the minor in Mathematics, but also the collection of math courses that meet the needs of each of Champlain’s majors. Originally from Atlanta, GA, she graduated from Converse University with both a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Music in Music Education. She then pursued graduate studies in mathematics, earning a Master of Arts in Mathematics from Western Michigan University and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Vermont.

While her earliest research interests were in topological graph theory and combinatorial design theory, teaching at Champlain has given her the opportunity to explore applications of mathematics across a variety of disciplines. She is now especially interested in the mathematics of cybersecurity and regularly teaches a course in the mathematics of Cryptography. She also teaches more traditional math courses like Calculus I, Calculus II, and Linear Algebra, but she enjoys infusing each course with examples that demonstrate how the theoretical ideas help solve problems in “the real world.”

In addition to her teaching and administrative roles, Dr. Brown serves her faculty colleagues as the Chair of the Faculty Senate Welfare Committee. She is also a champion for gender diversity in STEAM and advises Champlain’s Womxn in Technology Club and Champlain’s Women in Cybersecurity Student Chapter. Additionally, she is a facilitator with the Champ 101 program.

In her free time, Dr. Brown is an active musician and plays clarinet with several Burlington-area ensembles.

Professional & Scholastic Affiliations

• Mathematical Association of America
• Women in Cybersecurity

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