Office and People Directory

Neil Groberg

Biography

Neil Groberg has transformed his legal career and now dedicates himself exclusively to teaching, mediation, arbitration, training, and facilitation throughout the Northeast.

Neil has been teaching at Champlain since 2016. He has taught “Innovation, Ideation and Strategy” to CCO M.B.A. students; Health Care Law and the Senior Capstone to students seeking the B.S. in Health Care Administration with Champlain College Online; the Health Care law course to Master’s CCO students and Employment Law for Champlain’s traditional residential students. He has created a “Navigating Public Bureaucracy” for the new CCO Master’s in Public Administration degree program. He has also successfully mentored students to finish in first or second place in Champlain’s renowned Elevator Speech contest.

His law firm, Neil Groberg Attorney at Law LLC, was established in 1998. He has over thirty years’ experience as an employment and benefits attorney in for-profit, government, and non-profit institutional settings. He moved to Burlington Vermont from Connecticut in 2008 and is admitted to practice law in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont.

Invaluable to his teaching, Attorney Groberg’s experience also includes a broad range of legal issues including employment, health care, business practices, general corporate, commercial real estate, computer, contracts, employee benefits, insurance, real estate and tax law. This array of experience allows a special sensitivity to the impact of the law on overall business decisions and results and has directly involved him with strategic business decisions.

Neil received a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from Hofstra University School of Law. In addition, Attorney Groberg also has taken three separate leadership skills programs and intensive mediation and arbitration courses. He has completed all six separate Improvisation intensive 6-week courses available, a MOTH Story telling program, intensive Stand-Up comedian courses and has been a member of independent improv groups. All of this “comedic” training and performing has improved his creativity, listening, and communication skills, as well as sharpening his wit.

Professor Groberg has also taught online master’s level courses at Quinnipiac University and online undergraduate courses at Goodwin College.

Distinctions & Awards

Neil received merit recognition awards in several semesters for “exemplary teaching and real dedication to providing a high-quality education experience.”

Professional & Scholastic Affiliations
• Vermont Bar Association, Co-Chair, Dispute Resolution Section
• American Bar Association, Member

Professional & Scholastic Affiliations

• Vermont Bar Association, Co-Chair, Dispute Resolution Section
• American Bar Association, Member

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Maria Gutierrez

Biography

Maria is a seasoned academic affairs professional with over a decade of progressive leadership experience in higher education. She specializes in transfer credit evaluation, student support, and operational excellence. In her current role as Manager of Transfer Credit Evaluation at Champlain College, she brings a proven record of streamlining academic processes, building cross-functional partnerships, and advancing student-centered initiatives.

Maria has held key positions including Academic Dean, Associate Dean, and Visiting Professor, where she led academic operations, ensured regulatory compliance, and directed student retention efforts, particularly at institutions serving adult learners and non-traditional student populations. Her areas of expertise include institutional effectiveness, transfer policy development, and accreditation standards.

A passionate advocate for equity in education, Maria has led Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, community engagement efforts, and faculty development programs that support inclusive student success. She holds an MBA in Management and certifications in Six Sigma and Title IX/ADA compliance. Bilingual in English and Spanish, she also brings advanced data analysis and technology skills to every role, with proficiency in tools such as Power BI, Salesforce, Banner, Canvas, and Cognos.

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Jeanne Ha

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Christa Hagan-Howe

Biography

Christa Hagan-Howe (she or they pronouns) is passionate about adult education, social justice, and immediately applicable coursework. Focused on equity, Christa works full-time at an organization committed to equitable and inclusive math instruction support for K-12 educators.
Compassionate accountability and collaboration guide her work as a human and an instructor. When she’s not teaching online classes or striving to improve math education, she can be found hanging out with her hilarious toddler, hiking, drinking oat milk lattes, and tending to her flower and vegetable gardens.

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Emily Hagan-Howe

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Don Haggerty

Biography

Don is a Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Business Capstone Experiences at Champlain College Online (CCO). In addition to his teaching duties, where he is CCO’s Senior Faculty Lead for both faculty development and experiential learning. He holds three graduate degrees from the University of Vermont; a Master of Arts in Teaching (Secondary Education), an MBA (Quantitative Decision-Making), and an Ed.D. (Reflective Learning in Action Learning Teams). His interest is in reflective learning’s role in decision making, innovation and professional development and its integration with strength-based approaches to innovation, such as Appreciative Inquiry. In 2021 Don published “Doing by Learning: The business capstone experience of a real-world work-based project” which is used currently as the textbook for business and leadership capstone courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels both on-campus and at CCO.

Don brings decades of leadership in both education and business. Previous to joining Champlain College in 2000, he had owned, co-owned or assumed a leadership role with multiple small businesses including residential design/building, hospital systems software, organizational development, strategic marketing research, electric and gas industries and renewable energy. In a corporate setting he led in the design and deployment of many of Vermont’s first successful large scale, nationally recognized residential energy efficiency programs and led in the development of multiple “intrapreneurship” businesses including standby power generation, fiber optic communication systems and propane gas retailing.

In education, Don’s journey began in public education by working with middle/high school students while coaching cross-country ski racing and distance running. He joined Champlain after ten years of serving as an adjunct instructor and visiting lecturer at Trinity College and the University of Vermont in the areas of Finance, Managerial Economics, Marketing Research, Marketing, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Development and Computer Applications. At Champlain, Don has designed, built and taught numerous undergraduate and graduate programs including Business, Management, e-Business, Masters in Managing Innovation and Information Technology and the Masters in Business Administration. As Champlain’s first Associate Provost of Graduate Studies, he oversaw the design, launching and successful management of the college’s portfolio of ten graduate programs built around his self-designed and proprietary pedagogy called Integrated Reflective Practice. He currently teaches Business Strategy, Innovation in Organizations, Organizational Behavior, Leadership along with all capstone projects for both undergraduate Business Administration majors and Champlain’s MBA Program that he founded.

Don’s previous role in the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry represented an exciting intersection of his interests in education, organizational development and reflective, work-based learning. As the center’s first Director of Business Development he had the opportunity to work with multiple stakeholders and clients to design programs that accelerate organizational success through the use of Appreciative Inquiry. His Organizational Development certifications include Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator, Lominger Leadership Competencies, the Emotional Social Competencies Inventory (ESCI), Prosci Change Management, Stategyzer’s Business Model Canvas/Customer Value Proposition and, of course, Appreciative Inquiry.

Don’s outside interests include reading, nature photography, canoeing with his wife, kayaking and spending time with his children and five grandchildren. While “retired” from serious competition, he was formerly a dedicated triathlete and cross-country ski racer who still engages in citizens’ flat water canoe and cross country ski racing with an emphasis on fun participation. In the spring of 2018 Don was on sabbatical during which he wrote a book that is a student guide to researching and writing Project-Based/Experiential Business Capstones. The book was published in 2021 and is used currently by both undergraduate and MBA, Leadership and Organizational Development capstone students at Champlain. While writing this book, the sabbatical time was spent in Florida where he and his wife added approximately thirty rivers and wildlife refuges to their portfolio of paddling sites that they have explored in the state.

Publications & Abstracts

Doing by Learning: The Business Capstone Experience of a Real World, Work-based Project

What are your hobbies?

Woodworking, reading, nature photography, hiking, paddling, x-c skiing

Curriculum Vitae

READ MY CV

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Christian Hansen

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Toni Harris

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Brandy Havens

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Daniel Hawk

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Debra Heintz

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Daniel Hembree

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Michael Hemond

Biography

Mike Hemond has been an Adjunct with Champlain for more than 15 years, offering more than 20 years of prior field experience to the courses he teaches.

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Felix Hernandez

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Ellen Hewett

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