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For the past nine years of my time at Wichita State, I have been the director of the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries (ADCI). In this capacity, I have continued with the normal requirements of any faculty member, teaching, service and creative activity. Although I am still active in teaching and creative activity, my efforts in both areas are somewhat diminished because of the added role of administration in the school. This effort greatly increases the service portion of my job.
Teaching
The course load for the director of the school is not defined within the Policies and Procedures of the university or the College of Fine Arts Handbook. I try to stay active within the graphic design program and the school as a whole.
I currently teach a one-credit hour Professional Practices in Graphic Design class every semester to try and stay connected, at least in a small way, with the graphic design juniors and seniors. This is a required course that all graphic design majors take every semester of their junior and senior year. We discuss professional issues of interest to designers (ethics, contracts, legal issues, work environments, entrepreneurship, etc.) and connect with local design professionals as guest speakers. Students also prepare and maintain professional materials through this class (resumés, business cards, print portfolios, web sites).
In the spring semester, I also teach a one-credit hour Mid-Program Review course will all of the sophomores in the school. This is a class that prepares students for application to the professional program they intend to complete during their final two years at the university. They hear from faculty across the school, Art Education, Art History, Graphic Design and Studio Art. They also prepare a portfolio for review by the faculty at the end of the semester.
I try to keep myself available to fill in gaps in our classes that need to be covered. Over the past few years I have taught package design, typography, and software classes in Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign.
Creative Activity
I have tried to maintain my letterpress practice while working as director, but it has been very difficult to carve out time to get in the studio and print. However, because of relationships and work I completed prior to becoming director, I have maintained my speaking and workshop activities. On average, I have participated as a speaker or workshop facilitator at one conference per year for most of the time I have been director. A complete list of activities can be found in my vitae, but a few highlights include the following:
I have a seven-year connection with the International Conference on Typography and Visual Communications (ICTVC). This conference takes place every two to three years in Greece or its environs. In 2013 I had a paper accepted into the conference and contacted the organizer, Professor Klimis Mastoridis about offering a Letterpress workshop before the conference. There were no printing facilities, materials or presses available at the conference site in Cyprus. I laser cut Latin and Greek letterforms for the attendees to work with, packed up a limited selection of wood type, ink and brayers and created a “Letterpress Light” workshop for the conference. We discussed letterpress history, the technical aspects of how it works and the creative results designers can achieve. We used the laser cut letterforms to stamp designs on paper without a press. The workshop was a success and Professor Mastoridis invited me to offer the workshop again in 2016 in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2019 in Patras, Greece, and in 2022 at the final ICTVC in Thessaloniki, Greece. The last three workshops took place at printing facilities with letterpress equipment.
I suggested a similar workshop for the Serebro Nabora Type Conference in Moscow, Russia in 2016. While there are some letterpress shops operating in Russia, it is mostly a commercial process. I have found very few people using it as a creative outlet. There seems to be a much larger interest in hand lettering in Russia, however, the attendees liked the process of letterpress. While on this trip, I also presented a letterpress workshop to students at South Ural State University in Chelyabinsk, Russia.
I have presented papers and workshops at several conferences in the United Kingdom through connections with the National Print Museum in Dublin, Ireland and Dr. Caroline Archer and the Typographic Hub at Birmingham City University.
Service/Administration
As can be seen in my vitae, over the past nine years I have been very active in service to the university. I believe in a system of shared governance, but in order for this system to work, faculty have to be involved in service. I enjoy being involved in faculty senate and have been asked to be a member of the executive committee a number of times. I have served on two university budget committees as well as a number of other university committees.
Administration
A little background on the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries (ADCI) might help to put the rest of this document in context.
ADCI is a part of the College of Fine Arts at Wichita State University. We are one of four schools within the college. The other schools are the School of Digital Arts, the School of Music and the School of Performing Arts. ADCI offers degrees in Art Education, Art History, Graphic Design and Studio Art. The Studio Art area has concentrations in applied drawing, ceramics, community & social practice, painting, photo media, print media, and sculpture. We also offer a graduate program in Studio Art. The school has twelve full-time faculty, two part-time faculty and four staff members. We have about 300 majors. We occupy three buildings on campus (around 120,000 sq. ft.). McKnight Art Center is a complex of three buildings on campus that houses all of the two-dimensional programs of the school. Henrion Hall is a complex of two gymnasiums and a football stadium that are all connected together. Henrion Hall houses our three-dimensional programs and the graduate students.
As stated earlier, most of my work over the past four years has been in service and administration of the school. I think my training as a designer has fit perfectly within this new role at the university. As a graphic designer, I am trained to solve problems. While many of these problems are visual in nature, some of them are not. Some are strategic; some are process-oriented; some are relational. This is one of the parts of design I love the most, problem solving. I am also used to working with clients. As a designer, I try and find out what the problem is, what the client needs, how I can help. The people I deal with every day, students, faculty, administrators, are like clients. I see my job as trying to find out what my clients need, what the real problems are, then to try and find solutions.
One of the first tasks I took on after becoming director was the creation of a new program within the college. Along with a faculty member from the School of Music and one from the School of Performing Arts, we created a new degree program in Media Arts. The Bachelor of Applied Arts in Media Arts has four concentrations, animation, audio production, film making and game design. Students in the degree have a common core of classes they take that include practicums and professional practices. The degree also includes a 30-hour general education program. Because of my involvement in developing the program, being involved with the faculty senate and heading the academic affairs committee, I took the lead to shepherd the program through approval from the university faculty and the Kansas Board of Regents. The degree is now in its third year and has almost 300 majors.
During 2019, I led the school through a re-accreditation visit with NASAD.
Facilities have always been a major issue within the school. 120,000 square feet of facilities is a lot to oversee, especially in an art program. Over the years, the university has not kept up with maintenance issues and changing standards in health and safety. During my tenure as director, I have gone to great lengths to work with the administration to repair and upgrade the facilities that our students, faculty and staff work in every day. I feel that we have made huge steps forward on the facilities front. Major accomplishments in the facilities area include:
- Convinced the University to replace the 20’ x 40’ atrium skylight along with 26 other skylights in classrooms and faculty studios, many of which have leaked for at least the past 20 years.
- Secured renovations to studio classrooms including upgrades to electrical service, lighting and sinks.
- Complete overhaul of the wireless service to McKnight.
- Removal of old equipment, desks, tables and computers from all buildings.
- Installation of three new gas-fired Blaauw Kilns in Henrion Hall.
- Secured major upgrade to the electrical service in Henrion Hall to better service the stadium area.
- $1 million renovation of the ceramics area in Henrion including major health and safety upgrades. Also included was a complete overhaul of the fire alarm system.
- Began renovating graduate studios and critique space in Henrion.
- Secured a new location for our down-town student-run gallery, ShiftSpace. Through work with a local business, we now have a larger, better space for the same rent.
Of all these activities, I feel that the work in Henrion Hall is the most significant. This complex is about to turn 100 years old next year. It has housed many different academic programs in its long history. Unfortunately, it has been steadily declining for at least the past 30 years. When I took over as director there were significant issues with health and safety, cleanliness, and maintenance. It was not a good facility for our students to study in and the university seemed apathetic to its plight.
We removed clutter that had taken over a good portion of the building. We began to address issues within our control such as cleaning, painting walls and floors, and getting students to feel a sense of ownership of the space. I campaigned the administration to reconsider the needs of the building concentrating on the health and safety of our students. I believe that seeing some of the changes we instituted in the building helped win the administration over. The $1 million renovation to the ceramics area was funded by the university through repair and rehabilitation funding from the state. To date, we have only addressed a small portion of the building with the current renovation, but hopefully it is just the beginning.
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