SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2025: Plattsburgh – Julia Devine

Julia Devine is a Lecturer of Theatre at the State University of New York Plattsburgh. A winner of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence, Julia has been certified to teach online since 2015. She has developed and teaches online courses for the Theatre and English departments. Courses include Grant Writing, Professional Writing, Theatre History, and Theatre Senior Capstone. Julia won an Online Course Development stipend to create the online Grant Writing course, which brings students together across disciplines along with working professionals from the community.

Julia also serves as an online instructor with SUNY’s Center for Professional Development (CPD) where she teaches a Grants and Proposals course for faculty and staff SUNY wide. Beyond her teaching and interdisciplinary arts practice, she is a cultural organizer and financial coach for artists. Active in community engagement, Julia co-founded Outside Art: Plattsburgh Public Art Project where she has produced over 20 murals for the region. She also ran SUNY Plattsburgh’s former Center for Community Engagement. Julia offers online financial education through Minerva Financial Arts working with artists from Sundance, American Craft Council, YoungArts, Jerome Foundation, among others.

Her work in cultural development earned her a National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellowship in association with the Kresge Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Public Policy and Practice. Julia received her M.F.A. in Theatre from Harvard University’s Institute for Advanced Theatre Training in association with the American Repertory Theatre and Moscow Art Theatre School.  Julia brings the community to the online classroom by offering students real world connections.

I have been teaching online courses for the past 10 years. It’s been amazing to see how online resources and tools have grown in that time. I find online teaching to be very effective for professional skills based courses. Students can engage with more content and the online discussion forums are robust. Post-Covid I have found the students in my online courses sometimes more active and committed than my in-person classes. The online students meet their deadlines, actively participate in discussion, and cover more material.  The kinds of discussion that can happen online cannot always be replicated in the live classroom where not everyone participates. In the online space, every student has their voice heard. While online teaching may not be ideal for every subject, I find it transformative for students who want to practice and develop their professional skills.