Speaker Bios

Amy Allen (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the VT School of Education and one of the VT UDL Faculty Fellows. Throughout her time teaching in K-12 education, Amy focused on engaging students in complex and thoughtful dialogue and integrating social studies concepts throughout all subject areas, often using UDL principles. In addition to studying the link between religion and education, she researches various ways teachers integrate literature about social studies topics into the time and space devoted to language arts, using them as an avenue to enter into discussion and dialogue about issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice that are often neglected in the classroom.

Lisa Belden is an ecologist and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.  She has taught several different courses in her 20 years at Virginia Tech. She primarily teaches a large freshman-level Plants and Civilization pathways course, an upper-level pathways discourse class called Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Senior Seminar, and a graduate course in Population and Community Ecology. She flipped her Plants and Civilization class with the transition to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and has never gone back.  Students watch short content videos before class, and class time is spent on activities and discussions.

As Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Virginia Tech, Dr. Stephen Biscotte provides leadership for the Pathways to General Education and First-Year Experiences programs as well as oversees communication, program evaluation, and data analysis efforts across the unit of Undergraduate Education. Dr. Biscotte is the President of the Association for General and Liberal Studies (AGLS) and teaches graduate-level courses for the School of Education.

Michele Deramo (she/her, lei/suo), Associate Vice President in the Office of the President, designs and delivers capacity-building programming that advances Virginia Tech’s strategic priorities and core values. An important component of this work includes professional development coursework pertaining to inclusive pedagogy. She has collaborated with campus-wide initiatives including the Howard Hughes Inclusive Excellence grant, the Community and Belonging in the Classroom Faculty Innovation grant (TLOS), and Compassionate STEM (Wake Forest Character Education).  

Donna Fortune (she/her) is the Elementary Education Program Leader and serves as the Teacher Coordinator for Undergraduate and Graduate Licensure Programs in the School of Education at Virginia Tech. She teaches literacy, listening literacy, social studies, culturally responsive teaching pedagogies, and curriculum courses. She prioritizes including authentic tasks for students to engage in collaborative classroom conversations for learning and applying new content knowledge through inquiry and honing their critical thinking skills. She advocates using UDL practices when making instructional decisions and for providing authentic communication opportunities for students. She promotes the benefits of using children’s picture books as mentor texts for instruction and as resources that teachers can use with students as gateways into the world of others.

Buddy Howell is an advanced instructor in the School of Communication (SCOM).  As communication is the essence of being human, his pedagogy emphasizes not only the development of the mind—helping students learn how they learn so they can begin to master course content—but also the relational aspects of learning, nurtured through his development of a strong sense of community, making a large and impersonal class grow smaller and more personal, where all students have a sense of belonging and comfort, which can instill confidence in students that they can thrive, knowing they are supported by their instructor and each other. 

Dr. Howell holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Public Affairs and teaches large-lecture introductory courses, The First-Semester Experience in Communication and Introduction to Communication, as well as upper-division courses in Rhetoric, Persuasion, and Media & Politics.  He is a departmental, university, and nationally award-winning teacher, receiving the Excellence in Teaching First-Year Seminars Award from the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition (University of South Carolina), the Excellence in Teaching First-Year Seminars Award from the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning and the Office of First-Year Experiences, and the Dr. and Mrs. Philip J. Sporn University Award for Excellence in Teaching Introductory Courses.

Laura Hungerford is a veterinarian, infectious disease epidemiologist, and head of the Population Health Sciences Department at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. She teaches epidemiology and public health to undergraduate, graduate, medical, and veterinary students and provides continuing education for health professionals. Her research takes a collaborative One Health approach to infectious diseases, and spatial and quantitative analyses, involving cows, raccoons, frogs, birds, aquatic animals, and other species, including humans. She creates opportunities with students for them to combine their own approaches, strengths, and experiences with population health tools to find different ways of solving problems.

Kelli Karcher (she/her) currently serves as the Director for Undergraduate Academics and Inclusive Innovation in the Virginia Tech Math Department, where she champions inclusive pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning and introduces initiatives to ease first-year students’ transition into college. Her dedication to teaching excellence is evident in her continuous efforts to refine and adapt the department's instructional methods to meet the diverse needs of all students.

With a background as a course coordinator for differential calculus and a contributor to the design of the precalculus course, she possesses a comprehensive understanding of curriculum development. She currently leads a team of coordinators and is instrumental in providing faculty professional development opportunities emphasizing effective teaching strategies. Kelli's passion for teaching is particularly evident in her combinatorics courses, where she engages students by demonstrating the practical applications of combinatorics in everyday life through application-based learning and implementing a semester-long research project.

Christine Labuski is the Associate Director of the ASPECT program and associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her research and teaching are organized around two primary areas of inquiry: 1) sexualities and how sexualities become medicalized, and; 2) gender and climate/environmental justice, with an emphasis on feminist energy systems, queer ecologies, and the gender politics of fossil fuel boomtowns.

Dr. Labuski holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and she teaches courses in ecofeminisms; gender, science, and technology; sexualities; feminism, work, and labor; and sexual medicine. She has been awarded numerous teaching awards during her time at Virginia Tech, including the Diggs Teaching Scholar Award, a Certificate of Teaching Excellence, and the E. Gordon Ericksen Award for Graduate Student Teaching.

Kimberly Goddard Loeffert (she/her) is a music theorist and saxophonist who serves as an Assistant Professor in the Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts. Her recent scholarship has centered representation of minoritized composers and musicians in music theory and saxophone pedagogy and scholarship. She is co-editor with John Peterson (JMU) of Modeling Musical Analysis (Oxford University Press 2025), a collection of essays written by minoritized scholars modeling analytical writing for undergraduate students using a variety of music theories and genres. She is the Immediate Past President of the North American Saxophone Alliance.

Christa Miller is the Associate Director for Services for Students with Disabilities at Virginia Tech. She has a BS in Electrical Engineering (2008) and an MS in Industrial Systems Engineering (2012), both from Virginia Tech. She started working in Virginia Tech's Assistive Technologies group in 2006 as a student employee teaching students how to use assistive and accessible technologies. For the last several years, she's helped VT grow its digital accessibility footprint by helping to establish the centralized captioning fund, building up the campus' Accessibility Network, creating training on PDF accessibility, and leading cohorts of individuals preparing for the IAAP CPACC Certification. Christa is an active member of regional and national disability and accessibility organizations (AHEAD in VA, AHEAD, ATHEN, and Accessing Higher Ground). When she has the opportunity, her research interests include accessibility in STEM courses and Universal Design for Learning.

Nicole P. Pitterson is Associate Professor & Assistant Department Head for the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She holds a B.Sc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Technology, Jamaica, a M.Sc. in Manufacturing Engineering from Western Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. Upon completion of her doctoral degree, Dr. Pitterson worked as a postdoctoral research scholar at Oregon State University. Her research interests are exploring students' disciplinary identity through engagement with knowledge, curriculum design, assessment and evaluation and teaching for conceptual understanding. Dr. Pitterson is dedicated to bridging the gap between theoretical concepts with practical applications. She also aims to guide students to develop critical understanding of core engineering concepts that goes beyond rote memorization so that they can adapt to the changing demands of a global workforce.

Greg is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at Virginia Tech. He is the author of two textbooks and the co-author of a third, collectively used by over 45,000 students in the last six years. Passionate about innovative teaching, Greg has developed effective strategies for engaging large classes and ensuring that students with accommodations receive the support they need. In addition to his academic work, Greg is an internationally award-winning architect and industrial designer, blending creative experience with scholarly expertise to enrich both his students’ learning and his design practice.

Jingrong Xie (she/her), Director of Universal Design for Learning & Accessibility Services at Virginia Tech, supports and promotes inclusive, universally designed, and accessible learning experiences.  Her research interests include using UDL principles and emerging technology to support students with disabilities in postsecondary STEM, faculty development, and online learning. She serves as the chair of the UDL higher education network to connect UDL researchers and practitioners worldwide and she chairs the APIDA Caucus at Virginia Tech.

Yang (Cindy) Yi (she/her) is a Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and the Director of Multifunctional Integrated Circuits & Systems (MICS) at Virginia Tech. Her research interests include neuromorphic computing, artificial intelligence, very large-scale integrated circuits and systems, and machine learning for wireless networks and cybersecurity. Her research has resulted in over 200 publications in international journals and conference proceedings, with eight of her papers receiving Best Paper Awards at various international conferences.

Ruichuan Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Construction Engineering and Management at the Myers-Lawson School of Construction (MLSoC), Virginia Tech. His research focuses on automating the design, construction, and operation of sustainable buildings and infrastructures through artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data fusion and analytics, with an emphasis on accessibility and occupant health. He teaches courses in temporary structures, AI in building design and construction, and undergraduate research.