Faculty Associates
What is a Faculty Associate (FA)?
A Montgomery College faculty member who helps full-time and part-time faculty enrich the teaching and learning process. Each campus has two FAs who serve a two-year staggered term. The two-year appointment carries three equivalent semester hours (ESH) per semester.
What do they do?
FAs, in collaboration with the campus workgroup, design and deliver workshops that address the professional development needs of the faculty at their campus. Emphasis can be on face-to-face, online and/or blended workshops. FAs focus on pedagogical strategies aimed at improving student success. It is expected that FAs will have experience presenting for ELITE or presenting at regional or national conferences.
How can you become one?
The call for applications for new FAs goes out in April each year. Nominations can come from deans, chairs, faculty councils or faculty members themselves. Each nomination must include why the faculty member is qualified to be an ELITE FA. All nominations must also include a comment of support from the faculty member's dean.
Call for Workshop Proposals
ELITE invites full- and part- time faculty and instructional staff to submit workshop proposals. If you have an idea for a workshop you would like to offer or a professional development need that’s on your wish list, please send it our way. Under the ELITE model, professional development offerings are requested, planned, and facilitated by faculty…so we need you to get involved. We are seeking workshops that address pedagogical practices to promote student learning and professional development needs for faculty at all stages of their careers.
SUBMITTING IS EASY!
To submit, please complete this simple form I Have An Idea For A Workshop! If you have an idea for a workshop you would like to see ELITE offer, but you aren’t
sure who could facilitate, please email your campus’s ELITE Faculty Associates.
Mary Robinson
Professor Mary E. Robinson, Ed. D has been teaching Developmental Education courses at Montgomery College (MC) since 2007 and DL ENGL 103 since 2018. Interested in the developing and implementing Open Education Resources (OER’s) into her classes; Professor Robinson completed professional development workshops about OER’s. Presently, she is using OER’s in her Blended ENGL 103 course. Recently, she was selected for a MC Fellowship to co-develop assignments around one common United Nations Sustainable Development Goal. In 2019, with leadership representatives from MC, Professor Robinson visited the University of Gondar as part of the Montgomery College/Montgomery County Sister City trip, in hopes of the possibility of using OER materials to connect MC faculty with UOG faculty. Her teaching philosophy is from Anthony J. D’Angelo. D’Angelo aptly stated, “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” Professor Robinson has a passion for learning and teaches in hopes that students will enhance or grasp a passion for learning! Her teaching philosophy has three tenets, Professor as Learner, Professor as Course Facilitator, and a Professor who is Student-Centered. As a life-long learner, Professor Robinson continues to re-tool by participating Professional Development workshops. In addition, to providing service to the campus, collegewide and community, she is a volunteer for the Maryland Special Olympics.
Carla Narajno
Carla Isabel Naranjo is a Professor of Spanish for the Germantown campus. She has been teaching at Montgomery College for 13 years. She holds a BA in Political Science with a concentration in Latin America from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (1991), an MA in Spanish Language and Culture from Georgetown University (2005) and a Graduate Certification in Spanish Interpretation and Translation from American University in Washington, D.C (2005). She is currently pursuing a PhD in Instructional Leadership for Changing Populations from Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore.
Carla’s is passionately involved in learning about and developing curricula on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), also known as Global Classrooms at MC. This approach to teaching and learning brings together geographically distant instructors and students from different lingua-cultural backgrounds to communicate and collaborate through the use of online communication tools. Carla is the co-coordinator of the Global Classrooms Faculty Fellowship (sponsored by ELITE and the Humanities Division), where MC professors collaborate with faculty members from the following universities: The University of El Salvador (UES), The Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas in El Salvador, The University of Gondar in Ethiopia, and others in the works.
She was a member of the faculty cohort in the inaugural Scholarship for Excellence in Teaching (SET) Program in 2018, where she researched and developed collaborative learning techniques and metacognitive strategies that she continues to use in her language courses. All of her free time is dedicated to her daughter, Reina de la Paz.
To Be Added
Corinne Smith
Corinne Smith MBA RHIA CCS CDIP CHDA
Corinne Smith is a Professor and Program Coordinator for the Health Information Management and Coding Certificate programs at Montgomery College in Takoma Park, Maryland. She is an adjunct faculty in the Health Information and Informatics Management graduate program at University of Maryland Global Campus. She has been an educator for over eighteen years and contributed to course and curriculum design at several online and campus-based health information management programs.
Before working as an HIM educator, Corinne held management and health IT positions at healthcare organizations in the MD/DC/VA area. She holds several professional certifications, a BS in Health Information Management, an MBA in Clinical Information Systems and is currently completing her PhD in Educational Psychology. She holds a SLOAN-C (OLC) certification in Online Instructional Design and Online Teaching.
In her free time, Corinne enjoys beekeeping in her backyard and racing sailboats in her hometown, Annapolis, Maryland.
Mitch Tropin
Mitchell Tropin has been at Montgomery College for 15 years, first teaching English and then Speech Communications at all three campuses. He started teaching after a journalism career of more than 30 years with a major news organization. In the past decade, Mitch has co-authored a textbook on effective professional writing and a textbook on mass communications, Currents in Communication, which was released in its third edition this fall. A native of Silver Spring, Mitch resides in Takoma Park, living next door to the TP/SS campus. Mitch graduated from the University of Maryland with a journalism degree and from Johns Hopkins University with a master’s degree in Creative Non-Fiction Writing. An active member of the Montgomery College community, he currently serves as a faculty advisor to the ELITE program for professional development, a member of the Global Humanities Fellowship and faculty advisor to the Globe, the student newspaper for the Germantown Campus. In addition, he is vice president of the MC Part-Time Faculty Union, which is affiliated with SEIU Local 500. An advocate for collecting bargaining rights for college faculty members, Mitch has testified before the Maryland legislature in Annapolis, the Montgomery County Council and the Washington DC City Council. In the past, Mitch participated in the creation of the MC Institute for Part-Time Faculty Encouragement and Support, which is unique among the nation’s community colleges. He also was a member of the faculty team that created the OER (Original Educational Resources) course in speech communications for MC.
He is especially proud to have been named MC’s Part-Time Faculty Member of the Year in 2017 and to have received the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD)’s award for teaching excellence In 2018.
Germantown: All meetings via zoom from 2:00 - 3:00 pm
February 18, 2021 (PDF, 
)
March 18, 2021 - Did not meet
April 15, 2021 (PDF, )
May 20, 2021
Rockville:
TBA
Takoma Park/Silver Spring: All meetings via zoom from 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
February 12, 2021 (PDF, )
March 12, 2021 (PDF, )
April 21, 2021 (PDF, )
May 14, 2021
All meetings via zoom from 12:30 - 1:30 pm
February 5, 2021 (PDF, )
March 5, 2021 (PDF, )
April 2, 2021 (PDF, )
May 7, 2021