Project Design
Lab 2024
Facilitators
Embracing AI in the Classroom
Susan Hennessey (she/her)
Course Leader
Embracing AI in the Classroom
Susan brings with her years of experience helping educators enact student-centered pedagogies. Through her work as a district-wide technology integration coach and ten years of experience as a professional development coordinator at the Tarrant Institute of Innovative Education at UVM, Susan designs professional development experiences that model best practices in teaching and assessment. Susan also served as the program lead and taught courses in UVM's Educational Technology Online sequence, and co-directed UVM's Learning Lab, a network for educators to engage in action research with their students. She is currently the District Instructional and Technology Integration Coach, Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union. Prior to that, Susan worked at Harwood Union High School as the English department chair as well as the Library Media Specialist. In 2007, she won the Milken Educator Award for Vermont.
Jamie Watkins (he/him)
Workshop Leader & Teaching Artist
Embracing AI in the Classroom
Jamie is a Teaching Artist and Media Educator based in Portland, Maine. In addition to his work with CEL, he is the Senior Academic Technology Consultant and Manager of Digital Media Studios at Bates College, and has spent the past decade leading in-school residences, after school classes, and summer camp programming focused on filmmaking, podcast creation, and digital storytelling for students throughout New York City and New England. He co-developed the Manhattan Youth Film Intensive, a free filmmaking program for middle school students sponsored by the NYC Mayor’s Office and the Department of Youth and Community Development. A native Vermonter, Jamie has also worked as a Teaching Artist with the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, the Media Factory/RETN, and he created and led digital storytelling programs for Waynflete School, Opera House Arts, and the Reach Performing Arts Center in Stonington, Maine.
The Art Room INsideOUT
Judy Klima (she/her)
Course Leader
The Art Room INsideOUT
Judy Klima is an art educator who has been teaching for over 25 years. She has taught across the spectrum of ages ranging from pre-k to adults. Judy helped launch the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington, Vermont where she worked as the Arts Coach to weave the arts across the curriculum and coordinate multiple whole school residencies and community events over the course of a decade. This work fostered an enlivened and artful school community featuring arts integration. It was through this work that Judy came to witness the power and impact the arts have on a community. Judy has been recognized by the University of Vermont and the National Art Education Association for her outstanding achievements in art education. Currently she is an art educator in Burlington, and lives there with her wife and two teenage sons. Her mission in this one short life is to live as fully and creatively as possible- day by day, minute by minute.
Evie Lovett (she/her)
Workshop Facilitator & Teaching Artist
The Art Room INsideOUT
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Evie's work spans cyanotype, digital and analog photography, digital media, storytelling, encaustic painting, teaching, and public art and community art-making and placemaking, in multiple mediums. She is motivated to explore the spaces where people and the natural world meet and interact, to slow down and listen to the stories that emerge when good questions are asked of people and places. Bringing a social and environmental justice and equity, accessibility and inclusion lens to her work is a priority. What especially fuels Evie is putting the tools of art-making in people’s own hands, enabling them to explore aspects of themselves, their families, their communities, and the world around them through art-making and community collaboration, fearlessly and with joy.
Amber Paris (she/her)
Workshop Facilitator & Teaching Artist
The Art Room INsideOUT
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