UW-Stout Department of Art and Design

I am not a native upper-mid-westerner, rather I am an immigrant from the south, more specifically North Carolina. After many years of living in the Chapel Hill, NC area and wearing many caps in the multimedia industry with occasional stints teaching at several institutions, I decided to wholeheartedly throw my hat into the ring of academia and join the department of Art and Design here at UW-Stout. Thus, I find myself, along with my wife and two children, far from my roots, yet happily in my third year of teaching multimedia design at UW-Stout.

I teach a variety of courses in multimedia design here at Stout including 2D Digital Imaging, an introduction to the basics of designing digital imagery; Digital Narrative, a survey of time-based media, animation and digital storytelling; Digital Characters, an exploration of digital character design, modeling and animation; and Senior Project Multimedia Design, the capstone course for multimedia seniors taken in their last semester before graduation.

Along with two colleagues in the Math, Statistics and Computer Science department, I am currently working on creating a new degree program in Game Design and Development. After a lot of research and curriculum development, our efforts have finally transitioned from the planning stage into the formal process of becoming a new bachelor’s degree at the university. While we are still some time away from enrolling new students into the program, beginning the formal process of planning the degree means we have passed a major milestone.

I have a wide variety of research interests as they relate to multimedia design including the educational value of computer and video games; expressive animation techniques including hand-drawn and stop-motion, information design and visualization; and character design for animation. I maintain professional connections to industry working as a design consultant for a variety of clients. The most recent consulting project that I’ve been involved with was a design for a touch screen interface for a breast ultrasound device for Insight Product Development in Raleigh, NC and their client Orison Corporation. Maintaining active connections to industry helps to keep me on my toes and allows me to bring relevant information and experiences into the classroom.