Tabletop Scholars
WORKSHOP DAY AGENDA
Board Game Academics is proud to present a professional development day featuring leading play-based professionals in tabletop games.
Join Us in Rochester, NY
The Practitioner Workshop Day is a dedicated pre-conference experience created specifically for professionals who use or want to use tabletop games as tools in their work.
Attendance Options:
- Workshop Day Attendance – $150
- Tabletop Scholars Conference – $300
* Inquire about group rate discounts
Why Join Us?
It is a practitioner-first space focused on real-world application, shared learning, with practical takeaways. We will start the day with a keynote presentation that opens us to the wonder and success of tabletop games in professional practice, followed by a guided tour of The Strong National Museum of Play by museum professionals to highlight the historical, sociological, and psychological value of play. Then, attend one of our four professional tracks, and the day will be wrapped up with open tabletop play and networking at Millennium Games, the largest game store in the country!
Keynote Address
”Connecting Play with Purpose: Accessibility, Inclusion, and Practical Applications of Tabletop Games”
Derek Chung
Track 1: Playing and Learning with Children
Hands-on strategies for engaging young learners through tabletop games.
Featured Speakers
Becka Cancelosi
Becka Cancelosi, M.Ed., is an established educator at Rose Tree Media School District, dedicating 10 years to fostering student growth and community. A graduate of West Chester University with a Master’s in Education, she enhances the learning experience through engaging instructional design and innovative technology implementation.
Rob Monahan
Rob is a learning scientist, educator, and educational designer specializing in the curation and pedagogical use of commercial tabletop games, tools, and toys for learning. With more than 25 years of experience in K-8 education, he has worked directly with over 15,000 students, ranging from children in homeless shelters in Queens, New York, to kids from some of the wealthiest families worldwide.
Josh Bound
Josh Bound, founder of Video Game Clubs of America and 1UpEDU, is excited to deliver a panel at the Tabletop Scholars Conference in April of 2026. Josh is honored to share how gaming clubs can serve as a catalyst for connection, growth, and meaningful change in schools and communities at the Tabletop Scholars Conference.
Track 2: Engaging Adults Through Games
Practical approaches for teaching, training, or facilitating adults with play.
Featured Speakers
Anthony Chatfield
Anthony Chatfield is the cofounder of Board Game Academics and its current Editor-in-Chief. He has been utilizing games in educational settings for more than a decade, including in his college composition courses at Drexel University and Thomas Jefferson University. He currently teaches first- and second-year writing at Thomas Jefferson University and has developed several courses that use tabletop board games in the classroom as tools for rhetorical analysis and communication instruction.
Trent Hergenrader
Dr. Trent Hergenrader is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the director of the Center for Worldbuilding and Storytelling. He is co-author of The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking and Empathy Through World Modeling, Simulations, and Games (MIT 2025) and author of Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers (Bloomsbury 2018). He regularly teaches classes on worldbuilding and fiction writing, where he uses tabletop role-playing games as the narrative engine to drive student stories.
Paul Hoard
Paul Hoard, PhD, LMHC, is a licensed counselor, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. His scholarship draws on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine play, games, and symbolic structures as sites where desire, enjoyment, agency, and formation are negotiated. He has published and presented internationally on psychoanalysis, sexuality, white-body supremacy, perpetration-induced traumatic stress, purity culture, and the theological logic of disgust, with particular attention to how cultural systems—including games—organize subjectivity, pleasure, and constraint.
Track 3: Personal Growth and Professional Development
Using tabletop games for self-reflection, therapeutic practice, and skill building.
Featured Speakers
Will Nation
A psychologist, educator, speaker, and all-around enthusiast of what happens when people, stories, and strange dice collide.
By training, I’m a clinical psychologist. By passion, I’ve spent years exploring how mental health intersects with geek culture, games, and storytelling. I work with individuals and groups to foster connection, build insight, and support change—whether that’s in a therapy office, a classroom, or around a game table. My clinical specialties include anxiety, social connection, identity, and using nontraditional modalities (like tabletop RPGs) to support therapeutic goals.
Meagan Henry
Meagan is a psychologist in Baltimore, Maryland. She earned her PhD in
Counseling Psychology from the University of Florida and currently
works at the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Student Counseling
Center. She previously worked in Mental Health Services at Johns
Hopkins University, where she was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons
as a therapeutic medium. Since then, she has brought D&D and other
games to her work as both therapeutic tools and outreach events (to
encourage students to have some fun and socialize). She personally
enjoys long games with lots of pieces to punch out, and games with
good co-op modes.
Matthew Makak
Matthew Makak is a licensed mental health counselor in New York and the founder of a private practice dedicated to supporting mental well-being. Combining a passion for board gaming with mental health advocacy, Matthew facilitates workshops and presentations at major conventions like Level Up and Gen Con. A strong advocate for DEI initiatives, he uses his YouTube platform to discuss social issues in gaming, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ inclusivity. As a trans, non-binary person, Matthew champions representation in the board gaming community, notably through talks like Queering the Table at Gen Con 2024, uplifting LGBTQ+ gamers and voices.
Track 4: Connecting Communities Through Play
Designing and facilitating group and community experiences with games.
Featured Speakers
GameMaster Dave
David VanderWerf has been teaching games, running events, and promoting new experiences for people to enjoy for more than 45 years. He is a veteran, has taught summer classes with the Gifted Child Society, has run or helped with over fifty gaming conventions, and has owned his own business, including a retail gaming store and a gaming-themed restaurant.
Chris Rodriguez
Chris has over 8 years of experience in the non-profit world, having developed social programs and managed teams in different organizations across New York City and Long Island.
Chris is also a board game enthusiast who joined the hobby back in 2004. His favorite games to play include Race for the Galaxy and Spirit Island.
Jenn Bartlett
Jenn Bartlett, Head of Reference and Adult Services at the Manchester Public Library, CT, is nationally and world-wide known for her work as “The Board Game Librarian”. In her own library, she has held Silk City Board Game Group for 10 years, a group for adults to learn board games in a safe and welcoming environment where volunteer teachers teach the games to attendees.
Attend the Tabletop Scholars Workshop Day
Each track provides guidance, demonstrations, and supported practice designed to help you confidently integrate tabletop games into your professional toolkit. You will explore why games work, how to use them with intention, and what it looks like to apply them in real settings with real people.
Workshops emphasize facilitation, inclusion, accessibility, and reflection so you leave with tools you can use immediately in classrooms, counseling spaces, libraries, community organizations, training sessions, and other professional environments.
This workshop day is designed for practitioners across a wide range of professional settings, including educators, counselors, medical professionals, librarians, social workers, facilitators, community organizers, youth workers, trainers, and more!
No prior academic or practitioner experience is required. This professional development day is for everyone who loves tabletop games and has always wanted to bring the wonder and knowledge of the tabletop to their job.
Join Us on April 16
Add the pre-conference workshop as an attendee of the Tabletop Scholars conference for $150.