Faculty Biographies

BIOGRAPHIES FACULTY

ELIZABETH BENSON | P 1

Praised for her “delightful” (The Boston Globe) and “delicately compassionate” (Times Herald Record) singing, Elizabeth Ann Benson is recognized as a dynamic and versatile performer. In her Carnegie Hall début, she created the title role of Lucy by Tom Cipullo, and her performance was acclaimed as “excellent” (The Big City). As a 2015 winner of The American Prize Chicago Musical Theatre Award, she made her solo début at Chicago’s Symphony Center singing music by Rodgers and Hammerstein with the Chicago Bar Association Symphony. Dr. Benson trained at The New England Conservatory (MM) and The City University of New York Graduate Center (DMA). She specializes in crossover vocal technique, spanning from opera to musical theatre to rock. She is the leading scholar on the art songs of Tom Cipullo, and completed extensive research for her dissertation, The Art Songs of Tom Cipullo (2011). She has presented on Cipullo at conferences for the National Association of Teachers of Singing and her article “Reclaiming ‘Romantic’: The Art Songs of Tom Cipullo” is forthcoming in the Journal of Singing. The proposed lecture-recital of the same name combines research findings from the article with live performance. At Auburn University, Dr. Benson is an assistant professor of music theatre singing and serves as music director in the theatre department’s production season.

BARB BONDY | P 7

Barb Bondy is a visual artist and professor of art in the Department of Art & Art History. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a BFA from the University of Windsor, Canada. Bondy has taught primarily drawing at Auburn since 2003 and was recently inducted into the College of Liberal Arts Academy of Outstanding Teachers. Since 2005, she has taught drawing classes with the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project (APAEP) and more recently for the APAEP Degree Program. Bondy, who is a past recipient of an Alabama State Council on the Arts fellowship, is currently involved in a collaborative research project with cognitive neuroscientist Jeffrey Katz. Their pilot project, funded by the AU Intramural Grants Program, combines art training and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to investigate the behavioral and neural changes (brain plasticity) behind students learning to draw. Bondy has exhibited nationally and internationally and has presented papers on the topic of her work and on drawing practice at professional conferences. KELLY BRYANT | P 8

Bryant is a practicing designer and artist whose work explores the beauty of typography. Her research has focused on integrating the more traditional forms of tactile art making (collage) with ever-evolving computer technology in the form of poster, identity and publication design. This research has been recognized both nationally and internationally through exhibitions; work published in nationally and internationally distributed graphic design books and has received various awards. More recently, her research has moved into the area of painting and collage as a means to work in an analog manner where typography is explored as shape, pattern and/or texture. This work was published this fall in Uppercase 35, an international design magazine, as a 6 page feature entitled “Kelly Bryant: Collages and Paintings inspired by Playful Typographic Details” and recognized this spring in Creative Quarterly 50, The Journal of Art and Design as a Fine Art Winner.

BEN BUSH, ISDA | P 9

Benjamin Bush is an assistant professor of Industrial Design at Auburn University. He joined the School of Industrial and Graphic Design in Fall of 2017 after years of advancing industrial design curriculums at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the Savannah College of Art and Design. Benjamin has championed the importance of studio culture and teamwork. His students have designed and built artifacts from kid’s toys to kayaks. He has led collaborative studios with some of the world’s most famous companies such as BMW, Snap On, Michael Kors, and HP to name a few.

He has spoken at numerous universities across Ireland, given sketching workshops in San Jose, Costa Rica and San Paolo, Brazil, facilitated design camps in Tuscumbia, Alabama and Foel Ortho, Wales, and led students to redesign the visual brand language of the Apt cultural center in Apt, France. In 2013, Benjamin was awarded the IDSA Young Educator of the Year Award. This annual award is given to an educator who has earned the respect and admiration of colleagues and students for his/her teaching of industrial design and maintained unwavering commitment to the values and principles of the industrial design profession. ANNIE B. CAMPBELL | P 10

Annie B. Campbell received her BFA from the Department of Crafts and Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2004, with a focus in ceramics. She spent time between degrees participating in ceramics programs in Italy, at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine, Maho Bay Clay Works in the US Virgin Islands, and Sugar Maples Center for the Arts in New York State. She was awarded her first solo show at the Gumenick Gallery in Glen Allen, Virginia in 2007. She received her MFA in Studio Ceramics from Indiana University, Bloomington in May 2010. In 2011 she was awarded an Emerging International Artist Residency at The Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. She was also awarded a year-long residency at Studio 550 in Manchester, NH in 2012 and was a Distinguished Fellow at Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences in 2015. She taught ceramics and 3-D design at Concord Community College, NH and Endicott College in Beverly, MA prior to joining the faculty at Auburn University as an Assistant Professor of Ceramics in 2016. She maintains an active studio practice and continues to exhibit her sculpture and installations nationally and internationally.

TESSA CARR | P 1

Tessa Carr earned her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in communication studies with an emphasis in performance studies and a portfolio in women’s and gender studies. She teaches and directs productions for Auburn University Department of Theatre and she also serves as the Artistic Director of Mosaic Theatre Company - a company sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts that is committed to creating original work fostering conversations about issues of diversity. Mosaic Theatre Company performs original work dealing with issues of diversity and social justice numerous times each semester at a variety of campus and community venues. Her research focuses on devised performance in practice and theory, autobiographical performance, feminist performance strategies, and performance as pedagogy. She enjoys creating print scholarship as well as performance as scholarly inquiry. Her latest autoethnographic performance art work, Hauntings: Marking Flesh, Time, Memory is an original work co-written and performed with Dr. Deanna Shoemaker. This work has been featured at California State Northridge, the Patti Pace Performance Festival at Southern Illinois University, The National Communication Association Conference, and Villanova University. The full script is published in Text and Performance Quarterly. Her current print scholarship endeavors examine the work of Mosaic Theatre Company and the possibilities for performance as civic engagement and dialogue.

BIOGRAPHIES FACULTY

DAVID CARTER | P 11

David Carter, Associate Professor of History, received his PhD from Duke University in 2001 and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992. Dr. Carter’s research interests are in the history of the civil rights movement, the history of the American South, and U.S. history since 1945. He is particularly drawn to the role of race and ideology in shaping American history. Carter is the author of _The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965-1968_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009) and co-edited along with Kent B. Germany _Mississippi Burning and the Passage of the Civil Rights Act: The Presidential Recordings, Lyndon B. Johnson, Volume 8, June 23-July 4, 1964_ (New York: Norton, 2011). Carter is the author of “The Williamston Freedom Movement: Civil Rights at the Grass Roots in Eastern North Carolina, 1957-1964,” an article in the _North Carolina Historical Review_ (January, 1999), which won the Robert Diggs Wimberly Connor Award for the best article published in that journal in the preceding year. Prior to coming to Auburn University in 2000, Dr. Carter taught at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and at Duke University.

JERI DICKEY | P 2

Jeri Dickey is in her 8th year in the Auburn theatre department. She has choreographed and /or directed every semester since arriving in 2010. Continually striving to stay current in the performing arts field, Jeri became certified in aerial arts in 2014. She has brought aerial to the AU stages with Dancing on the Edge, Antigone, Chicago, and Take a Walk In Her Shoes. She continues to aerial train and has students that are now certified as well. Dickey has won 3 Kennedy Center theatre festival awards , and a regional Emmy Award , all for outstanding choreography.

HOLLY DUNLAP | P 2

Holly Dunlap is a mother, poet, and Instructor of English at Auburn University. She holds a B.A. in English from Auburn University, 1998, an M.A. in English from University of Colorado, Boulder, and is currently an M.F.A. candidate in Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She published her first full book of poems, Feet to Water, in 2015, and has been published in the Denver Syntax, Illuminations, BlazeVox, as well as other literary journals. She has 2 poems forthcoming in an anthology of poetry for women.

MICHAEL FRAZER | P 12

Michael Frazer received his PhD from Auburn University in 2017 and has continued in the English Department as Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow. His research focuses on junctures between the Modern and Postmodern eras, especially in how they relate in terms of embodiment. As a knitwear designer, he aims to generate patterns that play with unconventional forms, varied textures, and visual graphics that reference and replicate pop and literary texts. 64

CHAITRA GURURAJA | P 3

Chaitra Gururaj is the director-cum-instructor of the Auburn Indian Music Ensemble. She brings her previous experience as the director of the Indian Music Ensemble at Emory university, Atlanta, GA.

Through her cultural entrepreneurial initiative ‘Sunada Acadamy of Music and Yoga’ she is striving to bring the music of the east to the west to further cross cultural understanding. She has been training students in south Indian classical music (also referred to as carnatic music) in the United States since 2007. Prior to 2007, she was a an empaneled artist for south Indian music in All India Radio (AIR Bangalore), In addition to classical music, she is well-versed in other genres of Indian music such as semiclassical, contemporary and folk music.

MATTHEW HALL | P 13

Matthew Hall studied architecture at the University of Tennessee and the Harvard GSD with subsequent practice in Knoxville, Boston and Baltimore and teaching positions at the Maryland College Institute of Art and the University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design. He is currently an assistant professor at the Auburn University College of Architecture, Design & Construction, where he serves as the director of the Scandinavian study-abroad program with a primary teaching role in the materials and methods curriculum. His teaching interests lie in the fundamentals of design decision making, in particular the articulation of the values and judgments that shape an architect’s philosophy and process. Scholarly work includes international exhibitions, publications and lectures on the work of Swedish architects Bernt Nyberg and Sigurd Lewerentz that critically explore their relationship and collaborative work, and guest editor, author and photographer of A+U feature: Bernt Nyberg #564. Hall is also a founding member of Obstructures, a multi-disciplinary design collective that explores (and often contributes to) the problematic nature of design through spatial, graphic and object design. MATTHEW HOCH | P 3

Matthew Hoch is Associate Professor of Voice and Coordinator of Voice Studies at Auburn University, where he teaches applied voice, lyric diction, and Women in Music. He is the author of three books, including A Dictionary for the Modern Singer (2014), Welcome to Church Music & The Hymnal 1982 (2015), and Voice Secrets (2016). He is also the editor of the recently published So You Want to Sing Sacred Music (2017) and So You Want to Sing CCM (2018). His articles have been published in the Journal of Voice, Journal of Singing, Opera Journal, Choral Journal, Voice and Speech Review, Classical Singer, Chorister, Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music, and the Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians. Dr. Hoch earned his BM degree, summa cum laude, from Ithaca College with a triple major in vocal performance, music education, and music theory; MM from the Hartt School with a double major in vocal performance and music history; DMA from the New England Conservatory in vocal performance; and the Certificate in Vocology from the National Center for Voice and Speech. He is the winner of the 2016 Van L. Lawrence Fellowship, awarded jointly by the Voice Foundation and NATS, and the 2018 Teaching Excellence Award from the Auburn University College of Liberal Arts.

LAUREN ALYSSA HOWARD | P 14-15

Lauren Alyssa Howard was born and raised in a small town in Southeastern Alabama. After moving to the Metro-Atlanta area in 1996, she attended the University of Georgia where she received her Bachelors of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Drawing. Quoting her rural upbringing, Howard uses references from a particular lower-middle working class history to address identity, gender, and place. She has received multiple scholarships and awards such as the Las Damas de Arte Scholarship and the Jack and Jeanne Endowment Fellowship in Art, and a fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been exhibited nationally and has been shown at HERE Arts in NYC, Aljira Fine Art Center, and The Contemporary Art Museum of Tampa. She is looking forward to an upcoming show at Los del Patio in the Republic of Panama. Having found her way back to the South after receiving her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Florida and living and working in Brooklyn, NY she is now teaching at Auburn University.

BIOGRAPHIES FACULTY

ZDENKO KRTIĆ | P 16-17

Zdenko Krtić is a practicing artist whose work has been featured in numerous group and one- person exhibitions both in the US and in Europe. His work consists of mixed media encaustic paintings, works on paper and photography. The two most recent solo exhibitions were in Rome, Italy: Vernal Pools – Recent Encaustic Paintings at Temple Art Gallery (2015), and Rome Drawings – Selected Works on Paper at UARC Rome Center (2017). In 2016, his paintings were included in an invitational exhibition titled Melting Wax - a Survey of Works by Alabama Encaustic Artists (Georgina Clarke Alabama Artists Gallery, Montgomery, AL. Krtić’s work has been commissioned by CNN network as part of their two special editorial features: 911- Ten Years After (2011), and Power (2012). He has received many grants and awards, including Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship and an Excellence in Research Award from Auburn University. Zdenko Krtic has also completed three visiting artists residencies at the American Academy in Rome, most recent one in May of 2015.

RUSTY LAY, IDSA | P 9

Rusty Lay, an assistant professor of in Industrial Design at Auburn University, began his academic career in 2015 with the AU School of Industrial and Graphic Design. Rusty worked in the Industrial Design industry for over a decade. He has designed a range of products on the market today including power tools, furniture, electronics & electronics accessories, medical equipment and more. He has worked in both the corporate and consulting design worlds and ran a design consultancy, Hybrid Design, with his brother from 2005 – 2012. From his time in Industry he holds over a dozen patents, both utility and design, and an “Innovation Award” from the Consumer Electronics Show in 2015.

Since beginning his academic career, Rusty has given talks and guest lectures on the design of sustainable systems on Auburn’s campus as well as an invited lecture to Reutlingen University in Reutlingen, Germany. He currently teaches third year studios and has led industry and cross departmental collaborations with Techtronics Industries, Western Forge and the McWhorter School of Building Science. He has a passion for teaching design, holding all students to a high standard that provides an environment for achievement and accomplishment. Rusty also continues to practice industrial design professionally for clients around the country. AMIT MOREY | P 18

Dr. Amit Morey is an Assistant Professor in the Dep’t of Poultry Science, AU working on innovative methods to detect wooden breast myopathy in meat. Dr. Rachel Moon is an Assistant Professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine, AU and works on cross sectional imaging (ultrasound, CT, MRI). Divya Srinivasan is a highly energetic and forward thinking high school student at Johns Creek High School, GA who worked relentlessly to convert the ultrasound images into frequency profile graphs. Lakshmi Krishnaprasad is a Senior at AU majoring in Computer Science and Music and converted the graphs into music.

CARLTON NELL | P 19-20

Carlton Nell’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country and is included in many public and private collections. His most recent painting and drawings were included in “Uncommon Territories,” an exhibition at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts commemorating the Alabama bicentennial; and a solo exhibition of new work is scheduled for the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan in early 2019. He maintains a studio in Opelika and is represented by Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York, and Thomas Deans Fine Art in Atlanta.

ALYSSA D. ROSS | P 5

Alyssa D. Ross was born in Guntersville, Alabama, but spent over a decade in Northern Virginia. After abandoning art school in Richmond, she went on to pursue writing. She now holds an MFA from George Mason University and a PhD. from Auburn University where she teaches writing and literature. Select readings are available at www.alyssarosswrites.com

FERESHTEH ROSTAMPOUR | P 21-22

Born in Iran, Fereshteh Rostampour is the professor of scenic, projection, and lighting design at Auburn University. Fereshteh worked as a Free-lance designer for numerous plays, dance, opera, and film internationally. She has received prestigious awards and presented her work at international venues in the Czech Republic, Wales, Korea, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Taiwan, and China. Her work was chosen for the US National Exhibit at Prague Quadrennial 2015, World Stage Design (WSD) 2017 in Taipei, WSD 2013 in Cardiff, Wales, and WSD 2009 in Seoul, Korea. Her national presence includes designs for Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Silver Center for the Arts, Plymouth NH, Miller Performing Arts Center, Alfred, NY, and she is the seven times winner of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for Excellence in Design. Fereshteh serves on PQ 2019 curation committee for the USA National Exhibit, and on the advisory board of Broadway Educators. CHRISTINE SCHNITTKA | P 23

I am a creative. I create. I make. I always looks for creative ways to engage my students more deeply. I look for creative ways to convey information, and to develop curricula and lessons. I look for creative ways to express my ideas and feelings, and cannot stop “making.” As an engineer/scientist/teacher/artist, I am transdisciplinary in my approach to all that I do. I am a maker. I take what is in my mind and knit it, sew it, spin it, form it with clay, paint it, teach it, sing it, play it on the piano, or write about it.

JENNIFER SMITH | P 24

Jennifer Smith is an adjunct instructor for the Environmental Design program at Auburn University. Before teaching at Auburn she attained a Master of Architecture with a concentration in City Design at North Carolina State University. Her recent academic work focused on disaster-relief housing and resolving systemic issues in the urban environment to increase community resilience. She has sixyears of experience in architecture practice and has worked on international construction projects in rapidly urbanizing and developing economies including: Battambang, Cambodia; Chiang Rai, Thailand; and St. Marc, Haiti. In 2010 she graduated from Auburn University’s School of Architecture and Interior Architecture with Distinction where she won academic awards including the Alpha Rho Chi Award in Leadership & Service. She has experience in design-build and has led a design-build studio in Montana.

MARK THORNTON | P 25

Received my PhD in economics from Auburn University in 1989. His dissertation was published as The Economics of Prohibition by the University of Utah Press in 1991, it remains in print, and has been translated into Italian and Portuguese in recent years. He has been on Auburn’s faculty and graduate faculty in various capacities since the mid-1980s. He was Assistant Superintendent of Banking in Alabama (199799). He supervised the retranslation of Cantillon book and have written many academic articles on Cantillon’s economics.

BIOGRAPHIES FACULTY

SHEA TILLMAN | P 9

Shea joined the industrial design faculty in autumn of 2005, and currently teaches fourthyear advanced product design and second-year foundations studios. Previously, he has also led third-year studios in packaging, exhibit, and product redesign. Prior professional experience includes work as an industrial designer with Concept Center International (Ryobi, Ridgid, and Craftsman power tools) and Cooper Lighting (commercial lighting systems). In addition, Shea also worked as a user researcher with SonicRim, a research and strategy consultancy based in Columbus, Ohio. Research interests include the integration and communication of user research into the product development process, as well as the role of brand in developing a product family’s form language.

TZENG SHU-WEN | P 9

Shu-Wen Tzeng, an associate professor of Industrial Design at Auburn University and the winners of many IF Design Awards and G-Mark Design Awards. She received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Design from National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan and a Master Degree of Industrial Design from Auburn University. Prior to joining the School of Industrial and Graphic Design, Shu-Wen served as an industrial designer and a design manager in industry for nine years. Shu-Wen teaches mainly junior level design studios and graduate level lecture courses which include Human Factors in Design, Design Theories/ Interaction Design, and Materials & Technology. The research she has been conducting since joining Auburn University is inspired by her professional experience and passion for product design. Her research interests are primarily in the area of user-product interaction where user capability and product semantics are of the utmost importance. Her areas of expertise include product design, human factors, ergonomics, user interface and interaction design. After practicing as an industrial designer for more than two decades, Shu-Wen still has a great passion for using, creating, and teaching product design and continues to enjoy practicing her design skills and knowledge through teaching and real world design projects. ADRIENNE WILSON | P 5

Adrienne Wilson is an associate professor at the Department of Theatre. She teaches dance technique (modern dance and rhythm tap) and movement courses, music theory and piano skills for music theatre majors, and creates choreography for the annual dance concert. She is certified in the Bill Evans Method of Laban/ Bartenieff-Based Modern Dance Technique and as a somatic practitioner. Her work has been performed in New York, California, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida, and Utah. Professional activities include collaborating with colleagues in choreography and performance, serving as a board member for the American College Dance Association and the Alabama Dance Council, and member of the National Dance Education Organization. Conference presentations are focused on dance pedagogy and performance through modern dance and rhythm tap; with the concept of physical integration being a new area of creative research.

COURTNEY WINDHAM | P 26

Courtney Windham is a practicing designer and associate professor of graphic design at Auburn University’s School of Industrial + Graphic Design. Her design work is currently focused on methods of effective communication through the pairing of print and motion solutions. Through a continually evolving process, Courtney uses digital animation tools to bring handmade prints come to life. She has received numerous national and international awards and her work has been published in several magazines and books including: Print Magazine Regional Design Annual, HOW Magazine, Graphis Magazine, Creative Quarterly Journals, LogoLounge Vol. 9, and Graphic Design USA Magazine.