Office or Department: Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics

  • Faculty

Leslie Damon

Faculty

Leslie Damon teaches courses in both the Software Engineering and the Information Technology programs. She teaches across the curriculum, with her Fall semester often including one course per level: Introduction to Java with first-year students, Quality Assurance and Testing with 2nd-year students, Data Structures and Algorithms for 3rd year, and Operating Systems with the seniors. She enjoys teaching on the systems side of software engineering, at the intersection between software, hardware and infrastructure.

Prior to becoming a full time member of the faculty, Leslie was an adjunct instructor at Vermont Tech for seven years, while also working full time in the field. Leslie spent close to 30 years in the computing industry in a variety of roles. She has worked in system administration, software development, quality assurance, corporate teaching, project management, operations management and technical support. She has been a hiring manager for multiple companies, and still finds that it is easier to find people with technical skills than the ability to talk and write about technology. Being a jack of all trades, finding new jobs was always an interesting experience, since she is definitely a square peg in a world of round holes!

Leslie grew up half in Vermont and half in North Carolina, before coming back to Vermont to raise her son. When not teaching, Leslie is likely to be reading a fantasy or mystery book or surfing the web to keep up on current events, with one of her cats sleeping on her lap.

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  • Faculty

Gillian Galle

She/Her

Faculty

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Dr. Galle joined the mathematics faculty of the Castleton Campus in Fall 2014 after spending a year as a post-doctoral associate in the Department of Teaching and Learning at New York University in New York, NY. Inspired by teaching courses in Precalculus and Calculus at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY for two years, she received her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH in May 2013. After briefly serving as an academic dean from June 2020 – June 2023, she is pleased to be back in the classroom teaching mathematics!

When she’s not busy preparing her lectures or answering student questions, she enjoys knitting, doing jigsaw puzzles, bird-watching, and hiking/snow-shoeing.

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  • Faculty

Greg Petrics

He/Him

Professor

Dr. Gregory “Greg” Petrics is a mathematician and educator with research experience in sub-Riemannian geometry, institutional research, and applications artificial intelligence to biomedicine. He studied applications of geometry to neuroscience and neural networks at Dartmouth College, and earned a Ph.D in Mathematics from Dartmouth in June 2011. In August 2011, Dr. Petrics began teaching all levels of mathematics courses at Johnson State College in Johnson, VT (which in 2017 became Northern Vermont University-Johnson [NVU-J], and in 2023 has been renamed Vermont State University-Johnson [VtSU-J]). In 2019, Dr. Petrics was the co-author of the NVU-J bachelor’s degree in Data Science, and became the leader of a new collaborative research program in applications of artificial intelligence to problems in pulmonary health care between NVU-J and the Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. He has several publications on applying artificial intelligence to diagnostic problems in pulmonary health care. At VtSU-J Dr. Petrics teaches a wide variety of undergraduate mathematics, education, data science, and computer science courses. Dr. Petrics teaches four or five courses per semester at VtSU-J.

In 2015 Dr. Petrics began working during the summer months with the Vermont Mathematics Initiative (VMI) as an instructor and a consultant to support VMI’s mission to improve the mathematics content knowledge and pedagogy of elementary and secondary educators and support staff in the State of Vermont. In 2020 Dr. Petrics was a co-author of the new Post-Masters Certificate of Graduate Study (CGS) in mathematics instruction at VMI. Dr. Petrics teaches one or two courses per year at VMI.

Starting in 2013, Dr. Petrics became involved in institutional research in the Vermont State College System (VSCS). He spearheaded the data collection and analysis for the successful Johnson State College 2016 re-accreditation application, and co-authored the re-accreditation self-study with Daniel Regan. He has also authored several internal VSCS reports related to student retention and success, including research into the relationship between engagement and success in online learning in the VSCS. He also provided support to Dr. Leslie Kanat for the implementation of the Student Transition, Achievement, Retention and Teaching grant funded project (2012 NSF DUE 1153457; $551,800).

His areas of current research involve institutional research related to student retention and success, and applications of artificial intelligence to diagnosis problems in pulmonary health care and other parts of biomedicine. He also works with undergraduate students on mathematical research and mathematics education development, including i) non-Euclidean tessellations, ii) open source teaching tools for geometry, algebra, calculus, and differential equations, and iii) applications of applications of artificial intelligence to professional sports and other related fields.

Dr. Petrics is the current research coordinator for VtSU-J to the Vermont Biomedical Research Network (VBRN). Students and faculty interested in utilizing VBRN resources to support a research program related to biomedicine should contact Dr. Petrics.

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  • Faculty

Craig Damon

He/Him

Professor

Craig has spent extensive time in both academia and industry. He founded four software companies and has served as part of senior management for three others, including taking one company public.

He was a physics and philosophy double major for his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and did his doctoral work with Daniel Jackson and Jeanette Wing at Carnegie Mellon University, where he found the CS education group and served as the student representative to the School of Computer Science Doctoral Review Committee, where he helped redefine the requirements for the PhD program. Daniel Jackson has continued working on the research Daniel and Craig started together at CMU, with the current manifestation, Alcoa, winning Software Engineering tool of the year from the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) in 2015.

He has taught at the University of Vermont, where he created the PhD program in Computer Science and added a project based track to their existing MS/CS program. When he left UVM, he founded the CIS program at Vermont Technical College. A decade later, he developed the MS/SE program, the first graduate program in Vermont Tech’s history.

    • Staff

    Sandra Noyes

    She/Her

    Senior Staff Assistant

      • Faculty

      Andre St. Denis

      Professor

        • Faculty

        Christopher Schwaner

        Professor

          • Faculty

          Julie Theoret

          She/Her

          Professor

          Professor Theoret is a native of Essex Junction, Vermont. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Vermont, where she briefly flirted with the idea of being an engineer before deciding that math and mathematics education were a better fit.

          After getting her Ph.D. in non-associative algebra at the University of Virginia, she taught for a year at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, before moving back home to Vermont. She began teaching at Lyndon in Fall 2000. She taught there for eight years before transferring to Johnson in Fall 2008.

          Professor Theoret enjoys teaching at VTSU Johnson because of its small community and the ability to get to know her students outside of the classroom. Her passion is helping students, who struggle with math, realize that they can do math and that it is both useful and relevant to their lives. She has written a Quantitative Reasoning course and a History of Mathematics course, which emphasizes the contributions of diverse peoples and cultures to the development of mathematics over thousands of years. She has been an instructor with the Vermont Mathematics Initiative Master’s Program since 2001.

          In addition to teaching mathematics, she coordinates the VTSU Interdisciplinary Studies BA Program, which allows students to create a unique, yet cohesive, plan of study aligned with their personal and career goals.

          Professor Theoret is an avid fan of singing and musical theater – as a viewer, but also as a participant. She has been in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance six times. She also enjoys playing cards and board games, vacationing at the beach with her family, and snuggling with her cats.

            • Faculty

            Sue Generazzo

            She/Her

            Professor

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              • Faculty

              Bradley Beth

              He/Him

              Assistant Professor

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              Bradley Beth has worked in computer science education since 2000, wearing many hats, including high school teacher, curriculum designer, computer science education researcher, and university faculty.

              He currently is both Faculty and Program Coordinator for the Computer Information Systems and Data Science degree programs. His current research interests center on using game-based learning in computer science courses.

              While at The University of Texas at Austin, he was the primary developer of the Thriving in Our Digital World dual enrollment course, which included a novel college preparation model that has now been generalized to the UT OnRamps program (https://onramps.utexas.edu).

              His dual enrollment course has now been adapted for use as UTeach Computer Science Principles, an NSF-funded, College Board-endorsed curriculum for the Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles course (http://cs.uteach.utexas.edu/).

              While a high school teacher, Professor Beth was named, “Teacher with the Largest Number of Latino Students in the Nation Passing the Advanced Placement Computer Science Exam” by College Board in 2007.

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              • Faculty

              Keith Tookey

              He/Him

              Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems

              Keith Tookey holds two different Master’s degrees in Computer Science, a Ph.D. in Educational Applications of Computers, and has more than 40 years of teaching experience at six colleges. He has been an architect of Computer Science, Management Information Systems, and Graphic Arts Design majors. He has a broad range of courses that he can teach, both in and out of Computer Science.