People

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 Ph.D. 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 Graduate Studies and a Professor in the M.A. Program in Learning, Design, and Technology. She also serves as the Senior Director of Faculty Initiatives at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University. 

She is the author or co-author of numerous books and articles about higher education, including the forthcoming edited collection (with Josh Kim and Eddie Maloney) Recentering Learning: Complexity, Resilience and Adaptability in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024).  She is the author (with Susan Basalla) of So What Are You Going to Do with That?: Finding Careers Outside Academia (University of Chicago, 2007 and 2014). She has also written numerous articles about teaching and learning, including (with Sherry Linkon and Matt Pavesich) “Failing Forward: Writing, Design and Organic Curricular Change,” in Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education; (with Shannon Mooney) “Innovation in a Time of Crisis: A Networked Approach To Faculty Development,” in the Journal of Centers for Teaching and Learning, Spring 2021; and (with Susannah McGowan, Aiyanna Maciel; Clare Reid; and Alexa Eason) “Things Are Different Now: Students as Partners in a Course Design Institute,” in Resilient Pedagogy (2021).

She holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University and an M.A. from Georgetown. 

David Ebenbach, PhD

David Ebenbach is the Assistant Director for Faculty and graduate Student Programming 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.

Laura March, PhD

Laura March is the Associate Director of Learning Design at CNDLS. Her teaching and research relate to the many intersections of creativity, technology, and pedagogy. Prior to joining Georgetown, Dr. March worked at Missouri Online, UNC-Chapel Hill, the Pennsylvania State University, and American University.

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.

Doireann Renzi, PhD

Doireann Renzi is the Assistant Director of faculty initiatives at CNDLS, in addition to being a professor in the LDT program. Having moved to the U.S. from Cork, Ireland, Doireann went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Education and Human Development from the University of Maryland with a particular focus on the impacts of poverty, culture, and cooperative communication on language development and learning.

With over a decade of experience in the higher ed classroom, she prioritizes interactive and scenario-based learning and creating classes in collaboration with students. Having done her postdoctoral training in faculty development and higher education administration, she has worked on faculty development with hundreds of faculty, including most recently at UMD’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD

Lee Skallerup Bessette is the Assistant Director of Digital Learning 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. Previous 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 Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta (Canada) and has been teaching in higher education for over 15 years.

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.