Teaching & Research

My teaching and lived experience as a neurodivergent person inform my research into access and belonging: how deliberately crafted situations can help students participate, do their best work, and persist in their education.

Working with disabled students has changed how I teach everyone. Clearer scaffolding, explicit expectations, and multiple ways to participate strengthen the course itself. In a lecture of 184 students, anonymous questions and live activities reveal thinking I would otherwise miss. Game-based critique and review make demanding experiences more approachable.

This research is taking shape as a conversation guide for neurodivergent students and their design instructors, addressing needs that traditional accommodations often miss in design classrooms. I also guide colleagues through accommodation decisions, connecting individual needs with meaningful learning expectations.

I redesigned Foundations for Communication Design to integrate conceptual thinking, research, visual form, and software skills. Work from this freshman course has earned multiple international awards and exhibition selections, including a book cover chosen for Graphis Best100: 100 works selected from thousands of professional and student entries.

I also overhauled the review process, analyzing three years of evaluations, clarifying submissions, and eliminating requirements that provided little useful information. Application fees were reduced by half.

I connect students with professional practice early through industry guests, portfolio reviews, career workshops, and sustained mentorship. Student work from my courses has earned 57 recognitions in the international Graphis New Talent Awards, alongside Best100 and UnMuted exhibition selections. Directly instructed projects and portfolios incorporating work from my courses represented 9% of accepted entries nationwide at the 2026 National Student Show.

I developed and taught six Creative U workshops, including one-third of its 2026 offerings, advancing CVAD’s strategic commitment to precollege outreach and recruitment.

On the college’s Common Experience Committee, I established our initial focus on the first year and proposed the investigation now underway. We are examining course outcomes and planning qualitative analysis of student evaluations. I am also working with advising to develop a workshop that maps the first-year experience and identifies barriers to student success.

I see the results in work that earns international recognition, in students who begin to trust their own judgment, and in graduates who return to tell me what stayed with them. Those outcomes guide my teaching and the changes I lead across the program and college. My goal is for students to enter our alumni community with the skills to do ambitious work, the confidence to advocate for themselves, and a sense that they have a place in this profession. My responsibility is to create more accessible pathways and equip students to recognize and navigate barriers to their learning experience and early career.