TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

A design practice, in its simplest form is mediation. It is the process of making choices and evaluating how those decisions affect the viewer. As an educator, I expect students to understand that while design is a subjective process, designers have always made decisions. Throughout the courses I teach, students are required to demonstrate an aesthetic and conceptual understanding of their decision-making process during critiques while listening and utilizing critical feedback to improve their work.

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My educational goals are to promote critical thinking, to engage students in discussions surrounding contemporary culture, and to provide the necessary skillset to create innovative artwork in graphic design and new media. The studio courses I teach are an amalgam of lectures, discussions, experiential demos, critiques, visiting lecturers, and work time. Classroom discussions are centered around short readings or relevant podcasts (for example, Radiolab episodes: Loops, Color, Time) providing students with a foundation to discuss broader conceptual issues surrounding a graphic design and new media practice such as user interface and interaction, design for social impact, virtual materiality, obsolescence and forgetting (tied to digital memory), and varying forms of digital vision. It is important to me that students understand that technology is not only transforming the medium of graphic design, it’s changing the very means by which we interact with the world and document lived experience. As a practicing conceptual artist, it is vital that my student’s work is in dialog with contemporary culture and that they understand where their work fits into the historical context of graphic design and new media art. 

 

Bowling Green State University:

Instructor of Graphic Design

Fall 2016

ARTD 2010: Principles of Graphic Design

ARTC 2210: Digital Imaging

Spring 2017

ARTD 4080: Senior Seminar

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Southeast Missouri State University:

Instructor of Photography + Graphic Design

Fall 2015 + Spring 2016

PG284: Photography Fundamentals

PG285: Commercial Photography

GM200: Vector + Bitmapped Graphics

 

SUNY, University at Buffalo:

Graduate Teaching Fellow

Fall 2014 + Spring 2015

Art140: Time-Based Strategies

Fall 2013 + Spring 2014

Art250: Intro to Screen Printing

 

 

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