EMC 2021 Faculty Fellowship with Tanya Lee Stone

Written By: Gillianne Ross ‘22 & Preston Banas ‘24

The Emergent Media Center’s (EMC) faculty fellowship program is in its third semester of operation. The fellowship was developed out of feedback from professors wanting to make space for project based learning for their students outside of the classroom. In turn, the fellowship offers opportunities for students to integrate experiential learning into their academic careers. Both faculty and students benefit by bridging course subject matter with real-world applications. A course release allows the EMC faculty fellow to explore a project through the center. This opportunity is available each semester and works towards collaboration, one of the values promoted by the EMC. The fellowship also creates space to turn theory into practice and to explore the potential positive impacts of that work.  The EMC helps form a team for the project and encourages the faculty fellow to suggest students that they have worked with before and are most likely to be engaged in their project. 

Each year a call for applications is made available to full-time Champlain faculty and vetted by the EMC and administration. The EMC partners with the faculty fellow to provide help forming a team, educating the team about human-centered design methodology, keeping the team on task, and defining deliverables using SCRUM, a project management methodology.

Tanya Lee Stone, Asst. Professor and the Program Director of the Professional Writing Program at Champlain College, started her fellowship with the EMC in 2020 and has been teaching in the professional writing program since 2008.  Stone has a background in publishing. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1987, she worked at three major editorial publishing houses in New York City. When Tanya had the opportunity to move to Vermont in the late 1990s, she became an author and has now written over 100 children’s and young adult nonfiction books. Some of her books include Almost Astronauts and The Good, The Bad, and The Barbie. Stone has also published a Young Adult novel called A Bad Boy Can Be Good For a Girl.    

Stone heard about the fellowship via email promotion the EMC sends out to the faculty each year. Stone’s team of EMC student employees/interns have dubbed their project the “PubHub”. Following a Design Thinking approach, the team has been using focus groups and empathy interviews to collect insights from the Champlain College community. EMC student employees, Haley Seymour (Professional Writing ‘23), Bel Kelly (Professional Writing ‘23) and Parker Derrick (Graphic and Visual Communication Design ‘23) have been helping Tanya Stone to communicate with the various student publications on campus such as The Crossover, Chivomengro, and Willard & Maple to conceive ways to build awareness of these programs and help make sure the publications have the support they need to be efficient and productive. 

Fellowship Student Employees: Bel Kelly (Professional Writing ‘23), Parker Derrick (Graphic and Visual Communication Design ‘23), Haley Seymour (Professional Writing ‘23)

The main goals of this campaign are to increase visibility of these publications campus-wide and to raise awareness about publication opportunities. The PubHub team is determined to get students from across all programs of study to contribute and be more active in Champlain College’s student publications. Whether it be work with illustration, photos, writing, editing, design, or marketing, there is room for students from every major. 

The EMC Fellowship program has become a sought-after opportunity to allow faculty and student partnership to create a positive impact on campus. It is an essential tool and component which helps faculty and students collaborate towards a common goal based on their shared ideals on a variety of topics.