Meet the Design Team and Facilitators
Every year a team of experienced and committed teachers facilitate your Great Teachers experience – and this year’s team will continue the tradition in a unique, virtual design.
All team facilitators are “graduates” of previous Great Teachers Seminars in either North Carolina or West Virginia, and this year will include Ellen Bland (formerly at Central Carolina CC), Ronda Hawkins (Sandhills CC), Charles Bowling (McDowell Tech CC), Shelby Basinger (Sandhills CC), Jimi Wright (Forsyth Tech CC) and Pete Golden (formally at Sandhills CC).
Ellen Bland feels fortunate that most aspects of her professional life have provided opportunities to be creative and to build community. This includes not only involvement with the Great Teachers Movement (24 years!) and teaching college communication, but directing /producing countless unconventional theatre productions in lots of weird places. She is a former runner–now long distance walker, and enjoys playing music with friends, traveling, and being retired after 35 years of teaching. She has one college senior son, 3 grown step-kids, and 2 step-grandkids, and lives in the countryside of eclectic Pittsboro with her husband Rae. realbatross@embarqmail.com
Ronda began teaching full-time at Sandhills Community College in the Early Childhood Program in 2002. She attended her first Great Teacher’s Seminar in 2003 under the leadership of David Gottshell, founder of the Great Teacher Movement. Ronda has engaged in a plethora of professional development activities over the years and still consider the GTS to be what taught her the most about being a great teacher. In Fall 2021, she became the NC Great Teachers Seminar Coordinator. Ronda lives in Southern Pines, NC with Al, her husband of thirty-two years. Prior to moving to NC, they lived in NY, CO, NH and CA. hawkinsr@sandhills.edu
Chuck is an artist and craftsman, father, teacher, and student. He loves talking about biology, teaching and learning, and his two grown daughters—Grace and Claire. In his free time, he is gathering data for his dissertation and trying to write about adult community college students enrolled in classes with high school students. Soon, though, that free time will be once more filled by making all kinds of stuff out of clay and wood and with pencils and paint. He makes his home in Asheville and his living teaching biology to college transfer students and nurses-to-be at McDowell Technical Community College in Marion, NC. cdbowling70@go.mcdowelltech.edu
This is Shelby’s first year serving as a facilitator for the North Carolina Great Teachers Seminar. She attended the North Carolina Great Teachers Seminar at the Trinity Conference Center in Salter Path in 2019. Shelby is a Professor and Coordinator of the Health and Fitness Science program at Sandhills Community College. She has been teaching at Sandhills Community College since 2007 when the Health and Fitness Science program became the first such program to be offered in the North Carolina Community College system. She received her B.S. in Exercise Science – Athletic Training from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.Ed. in Kinesiology from the University of Virginia. Shelby enjoys fitness training, being active outdoors, attending concerts and sporting events, classical ballet and other forms of dance, traveling, and antiquing/junking. She and her high school sweetheart and husband of 20 years, Jay, have twin 17 year old sons, Connor and Luke. basingers@sandhills.edu
James Thomas “Jimi” Wright has attended previous meetings of the NCGTS, and found them to be fulfilling, refreshing, and affirming. He is honored to return as a facilitator. He has sixteen years of community college teaching experience. He has also served as a continuing education instructor and academic tutor. Currently, he is Associate Professor of Psychology at Forsyth Technical Community College, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill [BA, Psychology], and East Carolina University [MA, Psychology], he feels firmly connected to the educational foundations of his home state. His wife, Ellen, is a graduate of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Together, they are proud “Tar Heels.” jwright@forsythtech.edu
Pete accepted leadership as coordinator of the North Carolina Great Teachers Seminar in 2017 and helped coordinate the NCGTS until his retirement this past year. He attended the North Carolina Great Teachers Seminar in Hendersonville in 2008 and the National Great Teachers Seminar in Hawaii in 2016. He had been teaching in the North Carolina Community College System since 1987. Pete was a Chemistry Professor and the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Sandhills Community College until his retirement in December, 2021. Pete enjoys golf, weight training and the beach. He has two grandchildren, Karleigh-Paige age 5 and Ross age 18 months. ChemProf1490@gmail.com