Our People

Rachel Salois

Everything Rachel Salois knows about nouns, verbs, double negatives, and The Old Testament, she learned at St. Augustine's Elementary School: the sentence diagramming capitol of the world. Nowadays, Rachel uses the valuable lessons that St. A's taught her in her pursuits as a professional writing major at Champlain. She is editor-in-chief of The Current and a blogger for the Champlain Running Team. When she graduates, Rachel plans to learn how to use a hammer and nails and then build micro houses across New England, so that she can teach people to live happier, healthier, sexier lives with less square footage.

Alexandra McGreal

Alexandra McGreal is a sophomore at Champlain majoring in Legal Studies. She prefers that you call her Alex as it makes her feel less like a grown up and it's generally easier to say. She hails from a rambunctious family of six located in an itty bitty town in the boonies of Connecticut. Her childhood home is situated on Lake McDonough and she now spends her summer lifeguarding at its beach.

Alex is very fond of all things musical and spends a lot of time listening to the likes of Jack Johnson and the Grateful Dead. She has a healthy obsession with literature and especially enjoys the works of Alexandre Dumas, Philippa Gregory, and Stieg Larsson. She also enjoys skiing, rainy days, Oreos, and traveling. The one spot in the world she would love to visit is Ireland and she maintains hopes of studying abroad at Champlain's Dublin campus in the near future. Alex had always loved vacationing in Burlington while growing up and is now glad to be able to call it home.

Carissa Stimpfel

Carissa Stimpfel is a Professional Writing major. A native Vermonter, she is currently living in Burlington after spending a semester abroad studying in Florence, Italy.

Her work has been featured as a regular column in Moss On The Moon, a student-started and run zine; the Champlain Current, as both a movie and restaurant reviewer, and as Editor in Chief for Fall of 2009 and as Features Editor for Fall of 2010; and she has been touted as "...very bright, very smart and a damn good writer," in an article by author Tim Brookes, who besides being a well-respected writer, is also one of her professors and therefore is apt to say nice things about her.

In 2004, she won the annual Vermont Honors Competition for Excellence in Writing in her statewide freshmen-year division. That's what caused her to start thinking of and pursuing writing as a career, and since her parents didn't stop her, that's where she finds herself today.

You can reach her for comments, questions, or if you want to offer her a gig or job at: carissa.stimpfel@mymail.champlain.edu.  (Marriage proposals, spam, and misdirected emails will be deleted. Slavish praise and the phone numbers of hot men always appreciated. Laughter mandatory.)"

Alli Neal

I'm a Professional Writing major aspiring to be a copyeditor, but only if my grandiose dreams of staring a travel writing tour company in Ireland falls through. I love the letter "L" and the word coalesce. I love the kind of punctuation that no one really knows how to use. I love sensation and the writing that makes me feel it. I love the month of May because it doesn't know it's as pretty as June. I love horses and waterfalls, the sea and rock climbing. I'd love it if I could save the world--my number one superpower is smiling. I spent over five months living in Dublin, Ireland, and fell completely in love with the island. I tried really hard to accidentally miss my plane. It almost worked. If you don't see me for a couple days, check for cheap airfare--I've probably fled for home. Until then, come chat with me in the Writing Center. I don't bite, and I'd love to see you.

Skyler Lendway

Skyler is currently a Professional Writing major in his junior year at Champlain college. He hails from the climate-confused island of Nantucket, where in the summer he enjoys reading, playing ultimate Frisbee, singing a Capella and spending days at a time on the beach. He enjoys writing in just about any form, and hopes to write fantasy or sci-fi novels for a living someday.

Julia Grunewald

--- Our Director

Mike Kelly is the new director of the Champlain Writing Center as well as a faculty member in the Core Division. A native flatlander, Mike has a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska and does not yet know how to ski, snowshoe or snowboard, although he does play hockey. In addition to teaching writing, Mike serves as the Faculty in Residence at the Q for the 2010-11 academic year.

When he's not on campus, he spends most of his time playing whatever sport is in season or having an impromptu jam session with his three boys, ages 4, 2 and 6 months. As a new Vermonter, he is still trying to sound natural using "wicked" as an adjective and getting used to calling soft-serve ice cream a "creemee." 

His guilty pleasures include the television show True Blood and music by 80s hair bands. He does not like mushrooms.