LMS Fellows Bios
Columbia College Chicago's Learning Management System (LMS) Fellows for 2009/10
Dr. Anne L. Becker Ed.D.
Educational Studies
Anne L. Becker has a Doctorate in Education from Aurora University in Curriculum and Instruction, a Masters of Art in Teaching with a studio emphasis in Sculpture and a Bachelor of Science in Art Education. Dr. Becker has extensive teaching experience in the public schoolsystemin the secondary and elementary levels in the suburban/urban environment. She is the State Advisor for student chapters for the Illinois Art Education Association, and she is the chapter advisor for the Columbia College Student Chapter of the National Art Education Association.
Burt Burdeen
Radio Department 
Burt Burdeen began his radio career in Iowa as a 17 year old On-Air Talent and quickly made his way to Chicago. In Chicago, Burt held a number of positions at radio stations including: Program Director, Production Director, Promotions Director and On-Air Talent. Among Burt's many accolades, was the "Program Director Of The Year" from Billboard magazine. Burt takes great satisfaction in mentoring past and present students and currently teaches Intro to Radio and Radio Broadcasting I.
Mary Filice
Arts, Entertainment and Media Management
Mary Filice is tenure-track faculty and coordinator of the Media Concentration of the Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management Department. As an independent filmmaker and consultant Mary recently assisted Percolator Films (formerly Reetime Film and Video Forum) on their first film festival, The Talking Pictures Festival, which took place in Evanston May 1-3. Mary is also a media literacy advocate conducting a series of media literacy/filmmaking workshops for middle-school children in conjunction with the alternative filmmaking group Split Pillow.
Mary was selected to be a scholar at this year's National CASTL Institute. There she will present her research work-in-progress on the impact of media convergence and multitasking on student learning and critical thinking. Any help on this is appreciated!
This July Mary will be at the 29th International Conference on Critical Thinking in Berkely California conducting a break-out session; Truthiness, Trust, and Technology: Critical Thinking in the Age of Convergence.
Hopefully she'll find time to further develop a film project based on a one-act play by August Strindberg.
Joan Giroux
Art & Design
Joan Giroux is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and educator, whose work manifests as discrete objects, digital montage, kinetic sculpture, installation, full-scale theatrical productions and community interventions. The work reflects strong interests in language, history, game theory and social conditioning. In 2000, she and Lisa Kaftori founded the artist collective Compassionate Action Enterprises to develop creative art strategies addressing issues challenging the sustainability of our world.
Giroux received her graduate degree from Bard College’s interdisciplinary MFA program, and her 
BFA from Parsons School of Design. For years she commuted between New York and Germany where she attended courses in Experimental Sculpture/Multi-Media at Berlin’s Hochschule der Künste with Professor Shinkichi Tajiri.
Since 1987 Giroux has received various grants and awards, and performed and exhibited at venues in the US and abroad. In addition to traditional sculpture and digital imaging courses, she has taught seminars and workshops in experimental sculpture, performance and installation in the United States and Berlin. As Assistant Professor in Columbia College Chicago’s Art + Design Department, she teaches courses in studio art and art activism. She also teaches in Columbia’s New Millennium Studies freshman seminar program and is an active member of the Critical Encounters Taskforce.
Suzanne McBride
Journalism
Suzanne McBride is associate chair of the Journalism Department, where she teaches investigative reporting and community news to undergraduate and graduate students. She’s co-founder and co-publisher of ChicagoTalks.org, a local news site that covers neighborhoods throughout the city. An investigative series on the Chicago City Council published just two months after the site launched in 2007 won the top student award from Investigative Reporters and Editors in 2008. The site’s second investigation won a national Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists for the best work done by an independent web site. She’s taken students to Iowa to cover the 2008 caucuses and to St. Louis for the 2008 vice presidential debate. Before joining Columbia's faculty in 2005, Suzanne was a reporter and editor at The Indianapolis Star and the now-defunct Indianapolis News, and a manager at WTHR (Channel 13). She also worked as an editor at the Terre Haute (Ind.) Tribune-Star, a business reporter for The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne (Ind.) and a legislative aide on Capital Hill for an Ohio congressman. She's a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Iowa and earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University.
Christine Moran
Radio
Christine Moran has been teaching radio students at Columbia College Chicago for over 23 years. During this time, she has been nominated five times for The Columbia College Excellence in Teaching Award.
Outside of Columbia College, Christine can be heard on WLUP-FM as a weekend Personality, a position she has held since 2007. Before WLUP-FM, Christine was an evening Personality for over 7 years at WDRV-FM. At various times in her career, Christine has been a Program Director, Music Director and General Manager at various radio stations.
Kristin Pichaske
Television
Kristin Pichaske is a tenure-track faculty member in the Television Department at Columbia College, where she teaches Production and Editing classes with a focus on Documentary. Kristin's work as a documentary cinematographer, producer and director has been honored by NATAS, the National Federatio
n of Press Women and numerous film festivals. Prior to coming to Columbia, she directed and produced several independent documentaries, and helped write and produce a 100-part series for Lucasfilm/Paramount Pictures. In 2004, she move to Cape Town, South Africa, on a Fulbright fellowship and for four years, she remained in Africa doing documentary work and teaching production courses at the University of Cape Town. She is currently in post-production on the feature-length documentary Zuluhoops.
Kristin has a BS in Journalism/Communications from Northwestern University, a Masters in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University, and a PhD in Film and Media Studies from the University of Cape Town.
Brendan Riley, PhD
Coordinator of Technology & Pedagogy, English
I am a member of the English Department faculty at Columbia College Chicago, a liberal arts school for the performing and media arts. I teach Composition, New Media, and Cultural Studies classes at Columbia. I also serve as the English Department's Technology and Pedagogy Coordinator, a 
position in which I help other instructors develop their use of technology in the classroom. I'm probably best known around campus for my popular J-session class, "Zombies in Popular Media," which has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education and FoxNews Online.
I earned my Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida in 2004, where I studied Film and Media Studies as well as Rhetoric and Composition. My research interests include: Rhetoric and Composition theory, particularly work in the sub-field of Computers & Writing; New Media studies; Grammatology (the study of the history of writing); and Film and Media Studies. My essay, "Warren Ellis is the Future of Superhero Comics" appeared in the edited collection The Amazing Transforming Superhero; I contributed the short essay on "The Hard-Boiled Detective" for American Icons, a collection of essays about 100 key figures in American culture. My work has also appeared in peer reviewed journals such as Kairos and Computers and Composition Online, among others. I am a member of the editorial board for The Journal of Popular Culture and I serve (or have served) on the Executive Boards for both the Midwest and National Popular Culture Associations.
I also have pretty broad experience with web design and programming web applications.
Craig Sigele
Marketing Communication
Craig Sigele is the Academic Manager of the Marketing Communication Department. Craig has worked at the College since 2008. Prior to joining Columbia, Craig was part owner of a downtown photographic and digital printing company that produced first-quality graphics for museums, retail environments, tradeshows and fine artists. During his many years at the company, marketing and advertising were two of his major areas of responsibility. Craig has a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In his spare time, Craig is a voracious reader, tireless walker and Sunday painter. He has two cats, wears lot’s of plaid.
Don Smith
Film and Video
Don Smith is Associate Chair for the Core Curriculum and Critical Studies and Documentary programs in the Film & Video Department at Columbia College Chicago. His primary interest is in neo-ethnographic films that examine day-to-day life of families and volunteer group organization
s. He is a documentary film producer, writer and editor whose current projects include films about an Indiana high school girls basketball team and a series on the origins of story. His past projects include co-producing Peter Thompson’s ethnographic documentary about a Yucatec shaman, El Movimiento; Grit and Nail Polish about Hong Kong movie heroines with Birgit Rathsmann; Nest in the Heat about life in a small Moroccan village; Big Bill Hickey Sings the Blues which explores a musician’s search for his family. Notable fiction films include Up on the Rope(2006) directed by Paula Froehle and Threads directed by Hakim Belabbes and which premiered at the 2004 Venice Biennale. He is producing Belabbes’s next feature, Imilchil a mythic story based on forbidden lovein two Berber villages in the Atlas Mountains. He was also the photographer for Soups of France an archeology of French food written by Lois Rothert. In his other life he is a commercial pilot and a certified flight instructor.
Margaret Sullivan
Chairperson, Marketing Communication
Margaret Sullivan came to Columbia College in 1979 to teach copywriting, at that time offered in the Journalism Department, while she was working on Bloomingdale's, US Soil, Armstrong Flutes and Woodwinds, as well as many local accounts. In 1984, when the Advertising Department was formed, Ms. Sullivan became its first full time faculty member. When the Marketing Communication Department was launched in 1987, she became the first Director of Advertising Studies. In that role she proposed many of the existing curricular offerings, including Portfolio Development, the Advertising Practicum and Copywriter/Art Director Team. In 1997, Professor Sullivan became chair of the Marketing Communication Department. She proposed the department's first two minors, the Creative Sports Marketing Concentration and, along with Mort Kaplan, the Semester in LA Entertainment and Publicity Marketing Program. Presently, Ms. Sullivan teaches AdCult and Marketing Case Workshop.
In 1993 Ms. Sullivan created the Summer Arts Camp at Columbia College, an arts entrepreneurial youth mentoring project, and Chicago's first all day all arts camp. Children grades three through 
eight study visual, media and performing arts on the college campus.
Margaret Sullivan has served the college in many leadership roles, such as Chair of the College Council (for two terms), and Chair of the Council of Chairpersons.
Ms. Sullivan has authored three books: Kitchen Angst: Have You Got Problems? Cook ‘Em Out; Cook As I Say, Not As I Do; and The Date Book, all published by Chicago Review Press. Along with Thomas Hamilton and Herbert Allen, Ms. Sullivan recently published a textbook chapter on changing stigma through the media in On the Stigma of Mental Illness published by the American Psychological Association.
Professor Sullivan's research interest is in the area of the consumer consumption of vinyl records. She has presented research papers on that subject across the United States, and in Portugal, Germany, Canada and the Czech Republic. Her most recent paper: "Warholism and the Vinyl Record" was presented to the European Institute for Retail Sales and Services in Orlando, Florida this July.
Ms. Sullivan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Psychology and Communication Arts from Loyola University, and received an MFA in Creative Writing in 2005 from Columbia College Chicago.
Most recently, Ms.Sullivan is featured as one of the Happy 100 in Joanne Gordon's Be Happy at Work, Ballantine/Random House.