My best teachers were those that made the abstract relevant to concepts or feelings I already understood. In addition, they exhibited and inspired a great deal of curiosity. Relevancy and curiosity are inherent not only to good teaching, but also good design. In both my teaching and my design I’ve tried to raise questions, tell poignant stories, and engage the viewer or student in a personal way that encourages and rewards further dialogue and exploration.
Curriculum Vitae
Get a glimpse of my experience in design, education, and research.
Teaching Philosophy
Get a picture of why I love teaching, what I am looking for in a school, and what I hope to achieve in a teaching career.
Research Interests
My research is focused on how design processes may be able to improve health and development communications in small-scale community settings. Specifically I am looking at the use of participatory or collaborative design to raise community participation, dialogue, and awareness. This research has led me to explore several additional disciplines, including: community development, health communications, social marketing, idea generation, group consensus, participatory action research, and other qualitative research methods.
Currently I am pursuing opportunities to apply collaborative design methods on a larger scale, such as testing whether participatory methods are able to be economically replicated throughout a state or region to address a health issue. I am hoping to find funding to reproduce a toolkit similar to what I have demonstrated in the Colorado Meth Project and in the ongoing suicide prevention workshops I have facilitated.
I am also pursing the merger of this interest with secondary art education, as a means to distribution educational toolkits within schools. I see Art Education sharing a desire to integrate cultural issues into the classroom and a surge of interest in secondary design education. I believe this has the potential for statewide or regional initiatives that could result in a high level of visibility and an increased level of student participation/ownership. It also has the potential to build on mass marketing campaigns and possibly amplify art educators’ resources through the development of toolkits by state, national, or non-profit entities that are focused on health or community issues.
Student Work
Thanks to my students hard work, this pdf shows a range of work that has come out of my classrooms.