Dr. Virginia Franklin has served as a director of the St. Francis College Honors Program and is a Fulbright Senior Scholar. As a Fulbrighter, she taught graduate and undergraduate courses at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand and conducted research on issues of identity among African Americans and New Zealand Maori and how these connect to the U.S. Constitution and the Treaty of Waitangi. She has presented scholarly papers in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand and established a study-abroad relationship between St. Francis College and the University of Waikato. Dr. Franklin's teaching and scholarly interests are interdisciplinary and international, including drama, indigenous cultures and literatures (ex. Native American, Inuit, Sami, Maori, Aborigine, Tahitian, Samoan), law and literature, science and literature, photography and literature. She is currently working on an anthology of world indigenous literature. Dr. Franklin has served on the board of the Kings County Shakespeare Company. In 2006 Dr. Franklin received the St. Francis Distinguished Faculty Award.

Dr. Franklin is an avid photographer and the faculty moderator of the SFC Photography Club. Dr. Franklin has had three solo exhibits of her work at Rio II Gallery in Manhattan and St. Francis College’s Callahan Center Gallery. Her work has also been part of a national group exhibit at the Aotea Center in Auckland, New Zealand, as well as a group exhibit at Weill-Cornell Medical Center in NYC, and accepted in the Sydney (Australia) International Exhibition of Photography, the Alberta (Canada) International Exhibition, and the International Image Salon Oldenzaal competition in the Netherlands. Dr. Franklin serves on the Advisory Council of Rehabilitation Through Photography and is a member of the Waikato Photographic Society (New Zealand) and the New York Botanical Zoological Photographic Society.