TEACHING STATEMENT

I believe that it is my responsibility to insure that all students under my tutelage have an incredible learning experience. My approach incorporates lectures, demonstrations and one-on-one instruction adapted to the particular class of students and each individual student’s learning needs. Critical for providing the best educational experience for my students is immersing the students in interdisciplinary group projects. As a result, I am able to incorporate my varied industry, research and academic experience to the classroom.

I have taught many different audiences, including high school students, undergraduates, graduates and corporate groups at several institutions such as, UCLA, PENN, University of Utah, Microsoft, and RazorFish. Within these contexts, I have found remarkable results in teaching courses that require an understanding of multiple disciplines that blend the boundaries between art, technology, design and product planning by teaching the classes from multiple perspectives. For instance, when teaching graphics scripting, I have an expectation of teaching students to develop working code and yet I also include time, instruction and expectations on the quality of art content in the assignment. Beyond that, I also provide direction and time for additional experimenting on assignments with failure being an acceptable outcome, which helps to promote learning and the opportunity for more interesting products. I refer to my teaching approach as the “Guild-Style” educational approach, as was used in the guildhalls of da Vinci’s time.

The Guild-Style educational approach provides an extraordinary applied learning experience for students combining learning concepts that are not commonly taught together. It is designed to teach students to breakdown significantly complex problems into manageable segments that allow easy understanding of combined, diverse and complex concepts. For my classes this includes incorporating computer graphic principles with sculptural ideology and graphic algorithms with 3D design elementary concepts. The process provides a direct view of the correlations of the concepts between art, engineering, product design and product planning. It also allows for students with diverse backgrounds such as, engineers and artists to gain an appreciation and understanding of each other’s roles in and contributions to entertainment arts and engineering production—Improving teamwork. This educational practice has evolved over the past decade and has been influenced by several different course designs.

Another component of the Guild-Style education is the coalescence of the overall view of the diverse disciplines with the step-by-step or algorithmic instruction on the applied projects, thus allowing students to have the “big picture” and guiding their practice through the details. Working through the fundamentals from multiple-view points allows solidification of concepts and the algorithmic instructions helps students with different learning styles and academic backgrounds. The blending of the multiple disciplines such as graphics technology, character design, human anatomy/mechanics, entertainment, form, contour design and most particularly, the extreme concentration of computer science/engineering instruction and the algorithmic educational approach—marks the uniqueness of this Guild-Style educational approach.

I see teaching as the backbone of my career. I have an extraordinary passion, talent and vision for teaching. For me, the utmost reward comes from efficiently and effectively growing knowledge and abilities in students. I truly enjoy interacting with students of all levels and like to teach classes covering several disciplines, including computer programming, digital art production, product design, and games business methodologies.