Faculty for Education Degree

Jonathan Banfill

Biography

Dr. Jonathan Banfill is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Core Division at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, where he also directs the Global Studies Minor and the Freeman Foundation Asia Grant. Jonathan’s academic background is in Comparative and International Education, where he holds a PhD from UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies. He also holds an MA in Comparative International Politics from American University in Washington, D.C. and a BA in Comparative History from University of Washington, Seattle.

Jonathan’s research and pedagogical practice is engaged in creating interdisciplinary interconnections between new trends in the humanities, social research on global and urban issues, and creative practices from art and design, via place-based and experiential education. He has a long-term interest in thinking about these issues specifically within the context of a transnational Asia-Pacific, but is expanding in more directions since relocating to Vermont. At Champlain, this means creating courses and pedagogical spaces that can combine students’ professional knowledge with a humanistic perspective that can address future changes and global challenges. Jonathan has lived, worked, and taught in places as diverse as Los Angeles, Beijing, Belfast, Pyongyang, Mexico City, Shanghai, Cape Town, and Tokyo.

Jonathan is a graduate of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative, an interdisciplinary research and training program funded by the Mellon Foundation that brings together humanities scholars, architects, and urban planners to study 21st century issues in cities in the Asia Pacific. He also served as a research and teaching fellow for the program and at cityLAB, an urban research think tank in the UCLA department of Architecture and Urban Design. More recently Jonathan is a co-founder of the Urban Humanities Network, which is supporting a new generation of Urban Humanities scholars and practitioners around the world.

At Champlain, Jonathan is Primary Investigator for a Champlain College subaward grant that is part of a larger Vermont EPSCoR proposal organized by The Vermont Complex Systems Center at the University of Vermont. This project, called The Study of Online, Collective Knowledge, and Stories (SOCKS), examines social narratives using Big Data and computational tools. Champlain College’s project focuses on the way that the soundscape has changed in Vermont and how Vermonters have talked about those changes over the last 150 years. Jonathan is a contributing faculty member for a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement (DHAG) grant that will be used to build infrastructure and contribute to faculty’s professional development for Digital Humanities tools. Finally he is a contributing faculty member to an ongoing multi-media research project funded by the Council of Independent Colleges Humanities Research for the Public Good grant that is investigating the history of Urban Renewal in the city of Burlington.

Jonathan is presently helping develop the new major in Digital Humanities at Champlain that will start in fall 2024.

Publications & Abstracts

Urban Humanities Pedagogy (2016) 

Favorite Quote

“If a scholar stays only in one place, then he or she will know no more than one song, their mind poor and pathetic. He ought to travel widely, observe how people live and how things work, understand customs and cultures across regions, learn of mountains, waters, and meteorology (cosmology), in order to extend their knowhow. This is how scholars are benefited from their experiences.”

—Hu Yuan (993-1059), Northern Song Dynasty Educator speaking about what we would now call interdisciplinary education. I am a descendent of Hu and try to put his ideas into practice in my teaching. Original Chinese quote translated by Dr. Weiling Deng.

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Sarah Beno

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Weiling Deng

Biography

Dr. Weiling Deng is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Champlain College. She currently serves as the Core Division’s Third Year Faculty Lead and helps develop the new curriculum of Digital Humanities. Weiling received her Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Comparative Education from UCLA. Her research and teaching interests centrally address “a world in flux,” the ever-lasting, AI-infiltrated reality in which education, art, technology, and relationship are embedded. Weiling writes and teaches about Global Asias, Urban Humanities, panoramic and immersive media, generative education, higher education organizational change, gender and feminist studies, technology and race. Drawing from theorists like John Dewey and Paulo Freire, Weiling is dedicated to place-based international education through experiences of immigration, diaspora, border, and urban space.

Weiling is currently working on her first book project, titled Illuminating the Shadows of the Undead: Panoramic Fabulation of Transpacific Chinese Scenes. The book focuses on the speculative cinematic connections between Hollywood and Shanghai, Shenyang, and Beijing by way of Los Angeles’ DIY artist-built folk-art scenes. Built around the immersive art programs of a Los Angeles-based non-profit museum devoted to the illustrious history of proto-cinematic technologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the book adopts multiple media—including 360-degree panorama, diorama, peepshow, shadow projection performance, crankie, theater, walk-in archival installation, photography, garden, and film—to re-enliven the alien/ated “China” stories on the geographical and cultural edge of Hollywood.

Weiling’s articles have appeared in Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Panoramic and Immersive Media Studies, in South Asian Review, Museological Review, Critical Digital Humanities Cookbook, Los Angeles Review of Books, and academic anthologies including Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice.

Weiling spends a lot of her time reading, writing, and traveling globally. She loves cities with well-curated bookstores and museums, cool architecture and art scenes, expansive public transportation, and grassroots immigrant neighborhoods — in particular Montreal, Dublin, Los Angeles, and Seattle where she continues to build professional connections and engage in community works. As an amateur photographer, she documents the intersection of urban life and urban ruins. She sees ruins — in higher education, industry, and the environment — as generative sites where relations are revolutionized, reimagined, and rebuilt.

Publications & Abstracts

Deng, Weiling. 2025. “Speculative Wuhan Panorama: Scaling Hydro-Urbanism from the Hankou Water Tower.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias, vol. 11, no. 2, special issue The Asian Century: Idea, Method, and Media, edited by Christopher T. Fan, Paul Nadal, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, and Tina Chen, 43-53.

“A Classroom Camera Obscura.” International Panorama Council Newsletter no. 48. June 2025, pp. 38-41.

Deng, Weiling, Sara Velas, Ruby Carlson, and Jonathan Banfill. 2024 “Relocating Shengjing: Traveling Panorama as Theory.” In Panoramic and Immersive Media Studies Yearbook Vol. 1, edited by Molly Briggs, Thorsten Logge, and Nicholas Lowe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 25-54.

Deng, Weiling, Sara Velas, Ruby Carlson, and Jonathan Banfill. 2024. “The Feral Garden of the More-than-Panorama Museum.” Museological Review, issue 27, Museums as Spaces of Rootedness and Response-ability, 136-155.

Deng, Weiling. 2023. “Death and Life in the Bordersand–Remembering the Chance of Living during Partition through Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand.” South Asian Review, vol. 45, no. 1-2, special issue Partition: 75 Years and Beyond, edited by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard and Nalini Iyer.

“The Chinese Restaurant on Main Street, U.S.A. – Review of From Chinatown to Every Town by Zai Liang.” Los Angeles Review of Books. September 2023.

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

• Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing)
• The Intimacies of Four Continents (Lisa Lowe)
• Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (Saidiya Hartman)

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Sarah Jerger

Biography

Sarah Jerger is a Faculty Instructor of Human-Centered Design and Communication and has been at Champlain College since 2008. To her classroom teaching, she brings a career of hands-on experiential education forging over 100 project-based collaborations between students and industry partners in a studio environment. Jerger is passionate about empowering students to design solutions for positive social impact through “real-world” experiences.

Jerger holds a Master’s degree from Champlain College in Emergent Media. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Business and two Associate’s degrees in Multimedia & Graphic Design and Public Relations & Media Communications.

Jerger’s previous experience includes communications, operations, graphic design, and media-buying in the advertising, beverage, and real estate industries. She is a multi-disciplinary artist with a passion for analog making and craft which she explores intertwining with digital means of expression. Her work spans (for now) textile art, digital storytelling, mixed-media collage, video, and wearable electronics. She also operates and curates a Free Little Art Gallery, a community-driven project to make art more accessible and nurture creativity.

What are your hobbies?

Mixed media art, hiking, nature, cooking, taking classes & learning new things, procrastinating folding laundry

Favorite local eateries and things to do in Vermont:

Devil Takes a Holiday, Kate’s Food Truck, Jericho Cafe & Tavern, Spot on the Dock // Palmer Lane Maple for creemees, hikes around Indian Brook Reservoir, South End Art Hop in September, shows at the Monkey House, Vermont Comedy Club, concerts at Snow Farm Vineyard in South Hero

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Kathleen Legg

Biography

After graduating with an Economics degree from Harvard University, Kathleen fell into a career of teaching and has never looked back. Kathleen earned her Masters degree in Curriculum and Instruction in Secondary Mathematics from University of Colorado, Boulder. She’s taught mathematics to children since “93 in Colorado, Vermont, and internationally in London and the Hague. She also teaches science and in 2014 was recognized as VASE Science Teacher of the year.

Kathleen moved from teaching children in the classroom into a K-8 coaching role for Champlain Valley School District. This experience renewed her passion for math education and the importance of making mathematics meaningful and accessible for all learners. Kathleen has a passion for supporting teachers to be the best teachers of mathematics that they can be, regardless of their own mathematical journey.

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Fiadhnait Moser-Hardy

Biography

Fiadhnait Moser-Hardy joined Champlain College as an adjunct professor in the CCM (Writing), SoSI (Elementary Education), and Core Divisions in 2022. She currently teaches Children’s Literature and the Expressive Arts, Creative Writing, Writing for the Workplace, Navigating Your Information Landscape, and Navigating Higher Education.

Moser received her M.F.A. in Writing with a specialization in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2021. She is especially known for exploring difficult themes through fabulism and fantasy within her children’s books. Her publications include two middle grade novels, The Flourishing of Floralie Laurel and The Serendipity of Flightless Things, as well as an article discussing disability in publishing in Publishers Weekly.

In addition, Moser has extensive experience as an interdisciplinary artist and teacher, having previously worked as an elementary art and dance teacher. She is especially passionate about broadening her college students’ perspectives with new and creative ways of learning through interdisciplinary artistic study.

Distinctions & Awards

Featured Author at Denver Children’s Festival of Stories 2019

Publications & Abstracts

• The Flourishing of Floralie Laurel
• The Serendipity of Flightless Things
• It’s Not All About the Pub Date

Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing

• Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
• I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott and Sydney Smith

Favorite Quote

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

—Pablo Picasso

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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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Robin Perlah

Biography

Robin Perlah currently serves as Dean of the Core Division, Creative Studio and School of Social Innovation at Champlain College, where she is also an Associate Professor. In this role, she provides academic leadership across the humanities, social sciences, and creative arts and design disciplines.

During her time at Champlain, Perlah has held several leadership positions, including Chair of the Creative Studio, Program Director for several programs including Graphic Design (BFA), Interaction Design (BS) and Emergent Media (MFA and MS), Academic Director for the Emergent Media Center, and Assistant Dean for the Division of Communications and Creative Media. She has taught a range of courses in the areas of photography, graphic design, design history, image-making, visual design, interaction design, and media theory, serving both undergraduate and graduate students.

Perlah’s 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 taught and ran programs in art, design and creative media in K-12 education, and developed several community art programs to support young people through art-mentoring relationships and other activities. She also served as co-director for the Technology & Design Institute at Governor’s Institutes of Vermont. Prior to her work in education, she had a long career as a 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 currently serves as Vice Chair of the Vermont Arts Council board of trustees, which she rejoined in fall 2024. 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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Willard Sterne Randall

Biography

See my personal website.

Favorite Quote

“Do the best you can with what you have, where you are.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

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John Stroup

Biography

John Stroup came to Champlain College in the fall of 2009, having received his PhD in Education from the University of Virginia and his BA from The University of the South. Before receiving his PhD, Professor Stroup taught Middle School and High School English and Social Studies in San Antonio, TX. Among his many responsibilities, he also coached the middle school boys basketball team.

Professor Stroup’s research focuses on teacher education, educational technology and civic education. His current research investigates the ways in which youth become engaged in political and civic activities. He is a scholar and teacher in Middle and Secondary Teacher Education. He is a member of the Executive Council for the Vermont Educator Preparation Inquiry Collaborative (EPIC) which oversees the the Vermont Licensure Portfolio Statewide Calibration System.

Professor Stroup notes that “Learning is the experience of developing, and often changing, previously held knowledge, aims and behaviors. Great teachers make learning possible by marshalling together the widest variety of issues and perspectives for in-depth exploration. This exploration is most valuable when students are confident to participate fully and creatively.”

About his teaching, Professor Stroup believes that “Teacher educators bear a crucial responsibility. As a teacher of teachers, I know that my influence goes far beyond my own classroom walls. My effort to educate future teachers impacts the learning communities of future generations. In this sense, I view my teaching responsibilities as my commitment to participate positively in my own community.”

Distinctions & Awards

Champlain College Service-Learning Faculty Award Recipient, 2019-2020.
Champlain College, Pay it Forward Diversity Award Recipient, 2014-2015.
Vermont Campus Compact, Campus Leadership for Civic Engagement Finalist, 2012.
Vermont Campus Compact, Engaged Scholar Finalist, 2010.

Publications & Abstracts

Stroup, J. (August, 2018). Vermont Creative Schools Initiative Year 1 & 2 Evaluation Report. Montpelier, VT: Community Engagement Lab. https://www.communityengagementlab.org/research

Stroup, J., Dodson, K., Elias, K., & Gewirtzman, A. (forthcoming 2015) A Passion for service? The motivations for volunteerism among first year college students. Journal of the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. View article here: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1102757

Jones, J. N., Warnaar, B. L., Bench, J. H., & Stroup, J. (2014). Promoting the development of moral identity, behavior, and commitment in a social action program. Journal of Peace Education, 1-21. View article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17400201.2014.898626

Stroup, J. T., Bunting, H., Dodson, K., Horne, M., & Portilla, J. (2013). Promoting a Deliberative and Active Citizenry: Developing Traditional First Year College Student Political Engagement. College Teaching, 61(4), 116-126. View article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/87567555.2013.809327

Jones, J.N., Bench, J.H., Warnaar, B.L., & Stroup, J.T. (2013). Participation as Relational Process: Unpacking Involvement in Social Action and Community Service. Afterschool Matters, 18(2), 9-16. View article here: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1016820

Curriculum Vitae

READ MY CV

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