Michele Forte

Dr. Michele Forte is an Associate Professor and Mentor at the Center for Distance Learning at SUNY Empire State College. She teaches courses in Community and Human Services and was co-creator of a new online space that supports the success of first year students. She has been involved in the development of SUNY REAL as a member of a Lumina funded project, serving on the faculty team that developed the Global Learning Qualifications Framework. She was also invited to join the Open SUNY student supports team in a SUNY wide reassignment. She was co-PI in the first Metaliteracy IITG, was co-developer of the expanded Metaliteracy Learning Objectives, and co-presented and participated in the first metaliteracy connectivist MOOC. Her teaching background includes 12 years at SUNY Albany in Project Renaissance, an innovative freshman-year experience program. She is a licensed social worker and was a counselor at the Epilepsy Foundation of NENY (Northeastern New York) from 1999 – 2011. Her doctoral degree from the University at Albany is interdisciplinary, with a focus on social welfare and women’s studies. Her range of interests are equally interdisciplinary from investigating the intersections between feminist theory and power dynamics in group settings and creating student-centered and innovative strategies to engage, mentor, and retain first-year adult learners, to drawing connections between social media and processing various stages in the grief/loss cycles.