Bio | CV
Penny Perkins
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Penny Perkins taught at The Sage Colleges beginning in the Fall of 2007 as an assistant professor in Communications and Interdisciplinary Studies, after serving full-time as an adjunct professor during 2006-2007. She served as the coordinator of the communications program for Russell Sage College in Troy and the information design program for the Sage College of Albany. In 2007, she was named the first Judith A. Barnes Fellow in Communications which provides an annual stipend for professional development. She also served as the faculty advisor for The Quill, the student newspaper of Russell Sage College. In April 2008, she was selected as the 2008 Honorary Athenian, an annual award given to a faculty member to join the Russell Sage academic honor society. In June 2009, she received a research grant from the Sage Research Foundation.
Her prior teaching experience includes multimedia and writing/composition classes for ITT Technical Institute’s Albany campus, as well as creative writing and video-making classes for middle school students at the “Minds On” program of the Rensselaerville Institute in Rensselaerville, NY.
In her professional career, Penny has more than 20 years experience as a professional communicator working in a variety of industries, including serving as a marketing manager for a regional software company, a commercial producer for a local news station, and owner and an operator of her own communications firm specializing in marketing and branding for non-profits and small businesses. From 1997-2000, she served as the expert blogger for About.com on media literacy, media criticism, and alternative and progressive online media resources.
As an artist, Penny was active in the upstate New York filmmaking community and has served as a scriptwriter, actress, crew member, and producer on a number of independent productions including UnCivil Liberties (2006), the first Capital District independent feature to be licensed for national distribution. Penny was a long-time member and former president of UpstateIndependents.com, a networking and educational organization for independent film and video makers. Penny’s script “Cinderolla” won best romantic comedy screenplay in the 2000 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.
Penny is also the author of the science fiction novella Bob Bridges: An Apocalyptic Fable, which tells the story of how cockroaches save planet Earth from human folly. In 2000, Metroland magazine named her “Best Author” for the Capital District for her novella.
She worked with Thomas Mercer to create “Capital Letters: Signs of Previous Times” (2008), a short film on the visual pleasure of neon sign-watching on Central Avenue in Albany, NY. She has had several readings of her screenplays in venues in upstate New York and New York City, including a reading of “Messiah Machine” at the Saratoga Film Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, NY in 2007. She has also had several screenings of her short, experimental video works in several venues in upstate New York, including a screening of “Toast” at WAMC’s Linda Norris Auditorium in Albany, NY in 2005. Some of her most recent videos can be found on Vimeo.com/pennyperkins
Currently, Penny is getting her MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. She also has a Masters of Arts in English from the University at Albany, where she also held a Teaching Fellowship. She also holds a Bachelors of Arts with Honors in Philosophy from Trinity College in Hartford, CT, which she attended as an Illinois Scholar receiving a full academic scholarship.