Johns Hopkins University

Faculty Member, Advanced Academic Programs

About

My passion is theory and application of new media as it deconstructs semiotically to word, image, and motive across digital channels, and I have taught both new media theory and practice in the classroom. My research is indicative of inquiry into engineering components and psychosocial impacts on minds and societies from integration of art, media, science, and technology exchanged across digital media channels. Impacts and policies informed by the ethics of global media, largely in its relationship with terrorism informatics -- as seen through a philosophy of science, technology, and society lens -- are at the forefront of my research.

I may teach with a collaborative discussion-based pedagogy, leveraging the emerging technologies accessible for teaching and learning with the coaching, development, and empowerment of others, while I prefer a Socratic classroom environment. I encourage individual participation and personal contribution to the community of scholars while providing effective, clear, and concise direction to both traditional and non-traditional learners as each course and classroom might afford. I currently teach online and hybrid courses.

My students stretch to excel in professional media presentation. I try to ensure in students a healthy propensity for understanding the consequence and appropriateness of risk and failure. Students learn to understand that process builds the successful dynamics for a media event, and a speech is not simply a stuttering rush to get to a breathless result nor should a capstone project be devoid of multimodal demonstration.

I have taught in major cosmopolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and Baltimore, and that has assured provision for an extremely diverse group of students. Whether corporate executives who wishing to hone their skills, or convenience store clerks working evenings on multimedia projects, or Hispanic students biking miles across the city just to prove they can earn a well-deserved degree in graphic arts, such has been the typical diversity of my students.

I am an adaptable individual who rewards original thought and risk, yet also appreciates wit and humor when it fits into the learning environment. Despite an emphasis on critical thinking, the class mood I most often create is that of a sanctuary, not a battleground. My students are encouraged to give presentations that are value oriented: a rewarding, yet often-neglected area of rhetorics.

Another character trait I possess is fairness, along with a lifetime commitment to social justice. Students are expected to receive fair treatment in all aspects of our academic discourse, and to learn that critically thinking through controversial subject matter often requires that they remain flexible, and at times transparent or vulnerable, if they are to gain the highly-desired outcomes of personal peace, integrity, and satisfaction from the risks they take in the classroom and in life.

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