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Topic: Education

Debbie Gilliard

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Debbie Gilliard, Ph.D., is chair and professor in the Department of Management at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Gilliard has served as department chair since 2008 and is involved in many school and university committees. She is a faculty advisor for the International Business program, spearheaded the development of the global business programs at MSU Denver and serves on the MSU Denver Strategic Planning Task Force. Gilliard received the College of Business, Dean’s Special Award “Unsung Hero Scholarly Activity.” She is active in the community serving as representative to the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, participates in the Aurora Business and Professional Women’s Organization and is on the Board of the Western Decision Sciences Institute.

Gilliard has presented her scholarly work at regional and national conferences. Her case studies have been published in strategic management textbooks and used in the strategic management course at MSU Denver. She conducts research on strategic management and international business.

Gilliard received her doctorate in management from Arizona State University, a master’s in management from University of Colorado, Denver and a bachelor’s in management from University of Northern Colorado.

Bethany Fleck Dillen

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Bethany Fleck Dillen is a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver teaching courses in human development and psychology. Her teaching experience includes Introduction to Psychology, Developmental Educational Psychology, Statistics, Research Methods, Child Development, Developmental Research Methods, and Cognitive Growth and Development. In her courses, Fleck Dillen is committed to an active, learner-centered approach to teaching.

Her research centers on cognitive and social development in classroom contexts. Two distinct areas of work focus on issues in early childhood education and university classrooms. Both lines of research draw on developmental theory with the overall goal of enhancing the learning environment for students of all levels. Recently, she has been working on linking Documentation, an ECE teaching approach, with maternal reminiscing style. In the classroom, her research as of late focuses on the effects of service learning, flipped classrooms and integrating Social Media into teaching.

Fleck Dillen is also the director of regional conference programming for the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.

Ingrid Carter

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Ingrid Carter, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Elementary Education and Literacy in the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her research interests include preservice elementary education, teacher preparation in mathematics and science, equality and diversity in science education as well as argumentation in elementary science through writing.

In addition, she is the graduate programs coordinator for the School of Education at MSU Denver. In 2019, Carter was the third winner of the Faculty Senate Teaching Excellence Award and the winner of the 2019 Colorado Association of Science Teachers Award for Excellence in Teaching College Science.

Carter taught primary school grades in a Spanish/English bilingual classroom for four years in Richmond, CA. She also worked as an assistant professor at the University of Louisville for three years. Carter received her Ph.D. in science education from Indian University, Bloomington.

Rebecca Canges

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Rebecca Canges is an associate professor with the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She began her career in education as a one-on-one behavioral interventionist for children with autism. After earning her Education Specialist Teaching Credential, she became a special education middle school teacher in the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) in Southern California. During her time as a teacher she was nominated for the Disney American Teacher Award and was the first recipient of the LBUSD District Employee of the month. While working on her Masters in Special Education, Canges focused on research in the area of effective teaching practices for English Language Learners (ELLs).

She worked for many years as the research assistant for Jana Echevarria, Ph.D., and examined the effectiveness of the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol Model (SIOP Model) in supporting the educational needs of ELLs in the content area. Later, while working as a full time lecturer in the Special Education Credential program at California State University, Long Beach. Canges earned her doctorate from the University of Southern California in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in teaching in multicultural societies. Her doctoral work focused on methods that general education teachers can implement to support the social success of students with disabilities included in their classroom. Canges has taught at MSU Denver for the past seven years. She was the recipient of the 2016 Teaching Excellence Award from the MSU faculty senate and currently serves as the department chair for Special Education, Early Childhood and Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Education.

Philip Bernhardt

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Philip E. Bernhardt, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Secondary Education, K-12 Education and Educational Technology in the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

From July 2013 – August 2017 he served as the founding chair of the Department of Secondary Education, K-12 Education and Educational Technology. Bernhardt has spent nearly two decades working in public schools, including eight years as a secondary social studies teacher working in co-taught classrooms. In fall 2016, Bernhardt was selected by the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) as a clinical practice fellow and currently serves as co-author and senior research associate of a 5-year National Science Foundation Noyce Scholars grant. He regularly presents at national and regional conferences.

His professional development interests and expertise include co-teaching, backwards design, performance assessment, effective instructional practices, new teacher mentoring and induction, and supporting middle and high schools establish course placement norms to help students access advanced-level coursework. Bernhardt has published articles in numerous journals including American Secondary Education, The Community School Journal, Current Issues in Education, The Field Experience Journal, and Educational Leadership. He is collaborating on a textbook for middle school students entitled, “Digital Wellness: Promoting Life Skills for Thriving in a Connected World” and recently had a chapter published in, “Teaching Social Studies: A Methods Book for Methods Teachers.”

Bernhardt received his doctorate in curriculum and instruction from George Washington University, Washington, DC and Master of Arts in Teaching in social studies education from Boston University. He currently holds a Colorado professional teaching license in social studies education (7-12).

Michael Benitez

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Michael Benitez, Ph.D., is the vice president for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He is a nationally acclaimed scholar practitioner and educator in the field of diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. Benitez has a critical perspectives on social and cultural issues on topics related to leadership and identity development, intersectionality, race and ethnicity, knowledge production as well as critical and inclusive pedagogy/practice in higher education.

Prior to his current role at MSU Denver, Benitez served as director of diversity initiatives at Dickinson College, director of intercultural development and the black cultural center at Lafayette College, affiliate faculty in the Graduate School of Leadership and Professional Advancement at Duquesne University, director of intercultural engagement and leadership at Grinnell College, and chief diversity officer/dean of diversity and inclusion, and Title IX and EEO officer at the University of Puget Sound.

Benitez’s deep knowledge and practice of innovative equity and inclusion-based strategies has helped to address some of higher education’s more pressing campus climate issues of today, including the Diversity Monologues- a critical spoken work initiative he helped implement and shape at multiple institutions, the campus climate community participatory framework and the Northwest 5 Consortium for supporting faculty of color.

He has authored book chapters and articles on student identity, hip hop culture, cultural centers, cultural and ethnic studies, institutional research and campus climates as well as faculty development. Benitez has also been featured in educational documentaries such as “Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity” and has appeared on talk shows such as “Worlds Apart,” “Hard Knock Radio” and “Speak out with Tim Wise.”

Benitez received his Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy with a focus on social justice in higher education from Iowa State University, a master’s in counselor education and a bachelor’s in human development and family studies from Pennsylvania State University.

Lisa Altemueller

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Lisa Altemuller, Ed.D., is the associate dean for the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She previously served as the chair for the Elementary Education and Literacy Department for eight years and returned to full-time teaching in special education in the fall of 2016. Her courses at MSU Denver focus on assessment in special education, differentiation of instruction and collaboration, instructional planning, reading disabilities and foundations of elementary education.

Prior to teaching at MSU Denver, Altemuller worked as a licensed special education teacher and a licensed elementary education teacher. The majority of her early teaching experience occurred in elementary school with a high percentage of native Spanish speaking students. It was there that she became interested in learning about the special education process and how to identify learning disabilities in students. She also co-wrote two grants targeting literacy for incarcerated youth and co-wrote and received a grant designed to pay the tuition of students during their student teaching semester. Altemuller’s current research areas include teacher candidate professional behaviors, hybrid and flipped classroom instruction and parent involvement in education.

Altemuller received her Ed.D. in special education from the University of Northern Colorado in 2001, a master’s degree in special education from Appalachian University in 1996 and a bachelor’s in elementary education with a concentration in Spanish from the University of North Carolina in 1993.

Rosemarie Allen

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Rosemarie Allen, Ed.D., is the dean of the School of Education and a professor of Early Childhood Education. She began teaching at MSU Denver in 2004.

AnnJanette Alejano-Steele

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AnnJanette Alejano-Steele, Ph.D., is a professor in the department of health professions and the interim associate vice president for the Office of Graduate Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her health psychology expertise is focused on local and global multicultural issues, including reproductive health access for low-income populations, and comprehensive health services for victims of human trafficking.

Alejano-Steele has been teaching at MSU Denver since 1996, where she is tenured in the Departments of Psychology and Women’s Studies. Alejano-Steele served as interim chair of the Department of Social Work and was director of Gender Institute for Teaching and Advocacy from 2006 to 2009. She created and coordinated the Human Trafficking Academic Response Team, which consists of ten academic departments designed to provide wrap around academic services for survivors of human trafficking as a form of long-term survivorship.

Alejano-Steele serves on the steering committee of the victim services-focused Colorado Network to End Human Trafficking and on a key investigative taskforce led by the State of Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. She also serves on a national working group focusing on trauma-informed care for the Office of Women’s Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

She is co-founder of the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking (LCHT) and co-author of “The Colorado Project to Comprehensively Combat Human Trafficking,” a groundbreaking three-year LCHT study that examined how the state is responding to trafficking. She is currently coordinating a national project on promising practices in human trafficking.

Alejano-Steele received her doctorate in psychology from Michigan State University, NIH-supported postdoctoral work in psychology and medicine from the University of California, San Francisco.

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