We strive to apply new media solutions to real-world problems by bringing faculty, staff, students and industry leaders of all disciplines together.
Administrative Director, New Media Institute
I love how my students approach each opportunity with boundless energy, unconventional ideas, and unwavering enthusiasm. It’s these characteristics that challenge me year after year. I work strategically to meet the challenge, to help them see the world differently, and to foster dynamic change.
As Administrative Director of UGA’s New Media Institute, I guide the Emerging Media Masters, the New Media Certificate, and TEDxUGA. The NMI is an interdisciplinary academic unit dedicated to the teaching and training of new media professionals. We strive to apply new media solutions to real-world problems by bringing faculty, staff, students and industry leaders of all disciplines together. Since our founding, the NMI has seen exponential growth in the number of students and programs. Now under my leadership, I hope for similar growth in new opportunities for our students and alumni to serve their communities through innovation and collaboration.
Both in and out of the classroom, my efforts are focused on leading students through the constantly changing technology landscape. I push my students to build things and to break things, to fail fast and to figure it out, and to not only make things work but to make them work better. My classroom and my teaching approach are industry-focused and designed to create meaningful learning experiences that prepare my students to enter the workforce a stride ahead of their peers.
While I teach a variety of courses, my specialty is harnessing the power of presentations to transform audiences. As Nancy Duarte says, “If great presentations were easy to build and deliver, they wouldn’t be such an extraordinary form of communication.” In my leadership of TEDxUGA, I embrace the unique challenge of engaging diverse audiences by crafting presentations with purpose. With engagement exceeding 3.5 million viewers, our talks continue to share contagious ideas and spark action.