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Program Leadership and Staff

Our leadership team is comprised of experienced practitioners in the field of learning and design, who also work in Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), where they spearhead major teaching and learning initiatives. In the program, they lead curricular development efforts, teach, and serve as academic advisors to students.

Eddie Maloney, MLD Program Director

Eddie Maloney, PhD

Professor · LDT Founding Director

Eddie Maloney is the Executive Director of the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) and a Professor of Narrative Theory, Literature, and Practice in the Department of English. He holds a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in English Literature and a Master’s Degree from Syracuse University in English and Textual Studies. As Executive Director of CNDLS, a research center on teaching, learning and technology, he helps to define Georgetown’s strategy to advance teaching and learning practices at the University, including developing innovative approaches to technology-enhanced learning, learning analytics, and fulfilling the Jesuit mission of teaching to the whole student. As a professor in the Department of English, he teaches courses on modernism, postmodernism, critical and narrative theory.

Maggie Debelius, Professor and Director of Grad Studies

Maggie Debelius, PhD

Professor · LDT Director of Graduate Studies

Maggie Debelius is the Director of Faculty Initiatives at CNDLS and a professor in the English Department. For 13 years she served as Director of the Georgetown University Writing Center and now works with departments across the university on curriculum design, writing assessment, and faculty development. She has researched and published on graduate education as well as on composition pedagogy, writing across the curriculum, writing assessment, and Writing Centers.

Yianna Vovides, Director of Curriculum

Yianna Vovides, PhD

Professor · LDT Curriculum Director

Yianna Vovides is the Director of Learning Design and Research at CNDLS and teaches cyberlearning, modeling and simulations for learning in the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program. Her research focus is on the use of learning analytics within cyberlearning/online learning environments to examine how people learn. She has over 15 years of experience in higher education. She has presented in major educational technology conferences, published in peer reviewed journals, written book chapters, and co-authored a book.

Staff

Our staff work with leadership, faculty, and students to manage the master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology program’s operations and lend major support to admissions and academic planning. In addition, they advise both current and prospective students on application processing, financial aid, course registration and planning, and other administrative items.

La’Mon D. Johnson, MEd

Program Coordinator

La’Mon is the Program Coordinator for the Master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology program. In this role, he manages recruitment and admissions, student registration, and general financial and administrative operations, in addition to facilitating academic planning and student advising. His primary goal is to support students throughout their time in the program. Please feel free to reach out to La’Mon with any questions you might have about the application process or the LDT program in general. He also serves as the Assistant Director of Strategy and Operations in CNDLS.

Get to know us.

We encourage you to connect with us to ask questions and learn about the master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology program. To schedule an on-campus visit or phone call to meet with our leadership, faculty or staff, contact our Program Coordinator.
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Faculty

Our faculty are researchers and practitioners in a variety of disciplines and have been recognized for their contributions to teaching and learning. We highlight our faculty below. 

Bryan Alexander, PhD

Bryan Alexander is an internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of how technology transforms education. He teaches several courses with LDT on the role of technology in education.

He completed his English language and literature PhD at the University of Michigan in 1997, with a dissertation on doppelgangers in Romantic-era fiction and poetry.  Through Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC he consults throughout higher education in the United States and abroad.  Bryan also speaks widely and publishes frequently, with articles appearing in venues including The Atlantic Monthly, Inside Higher Ed. He recently finished Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education for Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Frank Ambrosio, PhD

Frank Ambrosio is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. After studies in Italian language and literature in Florence, Italy, he completed his doctoral degree at Fordham University with a specialization in contemporary European Philosophy. He is the founding Director, with Edward Maloney, of the Georgetown University “My Dante Project” a web-based platform for personal and collaborative study of Dante’s Commedia, available on EDX. He has received four separate awards from Georgetown University for excellence in teaching, and is a featured instructor in The Great Courses series offered by The Teaching Company.

Randy Bass, PhD

Randy Bass is Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Professor of English at Georgetown University, where he leads the Designing the Future(s) initiative and the Red House incubator for curricular transformation. He was the Founding Executive Director of Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) and has been working at the intersections of new media technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning for nearly thirty years, including serving as Director and Principal Investigator of the Visible Knowledge Project, a five-year scholarship of teaching and learning project involving 70 faculty on 21 university and college campuses. In January 2009, he published a collection of essays and synthesis of findings from the Visible Knowledge Project under the title, “The Difference that Inquiry Makes,” (co-edited with Bret Eynon) in the digital journal Academic Commons.

Maggie Debelius, PhD

Maggie Debelius is the Director of Faculty Initiatives at CNDLS and a professor in the English Department. For 13 years she served as Director of the Georgetown University Writing Center and now works with departments across the university on curriculum design, writing assessment, and faculty development. She has researched and published on graduate education as well as on composition pedagogy, writing across the curriculum, writing assessment, and Writing Centers.

 

David Ebenbach, PhD

David Ebenbach is a Project Manager at CNDLS and is also a Professor of the Practice in the Center for Jewish Civilization (CJC) and in the LDT Program. In the CJC he teaches literature and creative writing, and his teaching for LDT focuses on creativity. He works on a variety of projects at CNDLS, including the Engelhard Project, the Teaching Commons, Inclusive Pedagogy, Mid-Semester Teaching Feedback Sessions, and the Apprenticeship in Teaching program. He is also the author of seven books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, including the novel Miss Portland (Orison Books), the poetry collection Some Unimaginable Animal (Orison Books), and the creativity guide The Artist’s Torah (Wipf and Stock).

Ashley Finley, PhD

Dr. Ashley Finley is the vice president of strategic planning and partnerships and senior advisor to the president at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). She was previously the associate vice president for academic affairs and founding dean of the Dominican Experience at Dominican University of California. She began her career as a faculty member in the sociology department at Dickinson College, where she taught research methods, statistics, and social inequality. Dr. Finley’s research and campus engagement focus on connecting effective implementation of high-impact learning, assessment, and equity with student success outcomes and institutional advancement.

Phillip D. Long, PhD

Phil Long is a Senior Scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. and a Special Advisor to the CIO & Faculty Affiliate at ASU. Current work focuses on distributed ledgers, digital credentials and systems offering individual agency. In addition, his interests extend to learning analytics, emerging technologies and the design of physical learning spaces.

Dr. Long founded RHz Consulting, LLC, to pursue “passion projects” of particular interest. 

A lapsed biologist now learning scientist Phil focuses on emerging technologies, decentralized information architectures, learning analytics and engineering, the cognitive interactions associated with learning in many contexts, & the spaces, physical and virtual wherein they occur.

Eddie Maloney, PhD

Eddie Maloney is the Executive Director of the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) and a Professor of Narrative Theory, Literature, and Practice in the Department of English. He holds a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in English Literature and a Master’s Degree from Syracuse University in English and Textual Studies. As Executive Director of CNDLS, a research center on teaching, learning and technology, he helps to define Georgetown’s strategy to advance teaching and learning practices at the University, including developing innovative approaches to technology-enhanced learning, learning analytics, and fulfilling the Jesuit mission of teaching to the whole student. As a professor in the Department of English, he teaches courses on modernism, postmodernism, critical and narrative theory.

Shannon Mooney, PhD

Shannon Mooney is a senior data scientist at CNDLS and a faculty member in the LDT Program, where she teaches courses related to learning analytics and research design. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Cognitive Science from Georgetown University and a M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Toronto. She works closely with Georgetown University academic leadership and institutional  analytics teams to explore and model student learning data. Her research background is in quantitative variationist sociolinguistics, with a focus on first language acquisition in socially heterogeneous communities.

Ijeoma Njaka, MA

Ijeoma Njaka serves as the Senior Project Associate for Equity-Centered Design at the Red House and the Inclusive Pedagogy  Specialist for the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University. In this joint position, she specializes in arts-based approaches to inclusive and anti-racist teaching, curricula, and faculty development. A co-recipient of the 2021 Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award for her work the performance-based dialogue program In Your Shoes, she is also Ethics Lab Visiting Fellow for 2021-2022. During her time as an LDT student, Ijeoma launched and curated (In)Visibility at Georgetown: Past, Present, and Future, an art exhibit highlighting the work and experiences of marginalized students. In addition to being an alumna of the LDT Program, Mx. Njaka also holds an AB from Brown University. 

Michelle N. Ohnona, PhD

Michelle Ohnona is the Assistant Director for Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives at CNDLS, and teaches sexuality studies and postcolonial theory in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. In the LDT program, her courses focus on equity and social justice, and their relationship to higher education. In addition to her academic work, she brings a background in community organizing, youth advocacy, and facilitation. Her research focuses on critical pedagogy, with attention to institutional cultures, alternative assessment models, faculty development, and speculative design.

Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD

Lee Skallerup Bessette is a Learning Design Specialist at CNDLS working on online and hybrid course design, digital pedagogy, and academic technology. She teaches the ePortfolio Design Studio course in the LDT program, focusing on developing not only the final portfolio for the program, but also helping students think holistically about their professional and digital identities, as well as how to tell their professional narrative for different audiences and on different mediums. Previously to joining the CNDLS team, she worked at the University of Mary Washington on their Domain of One’s own initiative, as well as worked to integrate digital fluency in the curriculum across the institution, and taught in their Digital Studies program. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta (Canada) and has been teaching in higher education for over 15 years. 

Dawan Stanford, JD, PhD

Dawan Stanford is the master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology Design Studio Director, a higher-education innovation leader, and the President of Fluid Hive, a design-driven innovation studio supporting businesses, nonprofits, and educational intuitions. Dawan’s work focuses on learning, teaching and applying design thinking and service design. He has led design thinking projects at higher education institutions that range from single learning experiences and strategic workshops to university-wide initiatives like his role as the first Director of Design Thinking at Elon University. Dawan practiced business and technology law in the Silicon Valley and internationally. Dawan earned his JD from Berkeley Law at University of California and his PhD from the European Graduate School. He hosts the Design Thinking 101 Podcast and co-founded the Education Design Lab in Washington DC.

Yianna Vovides, PhD

Yianna Vovides is the Director of Learning Design and Research at CNDLS and teaches cyberlearning, modeling and simulations for learning in the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program. Her research focus is on the use of learning analytics within cyberlearning/online learning environments to examine how people learn. She has over 15 years of experience in higher education. She has presented in major educational technology conferences, published in peer reviewed journals, written book chapters, and co-authored a book.

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