I teach courses for the curious. If you’re interested in design, I can help you learn the fundamentals that will take you to your next step of study and even into a career. As a community college teacher, I focus on foundations: space as shape, type as image, composition as concept, practice as process. My teaching is informed by both formative and summative assessments and grounded in organization, experimentation, and repetition. And sure, if you’re looking for a three-credit elective that happens to fit into your schedule, that works too.As faculty chair of the Art & Design department at Westchester Community College, I’ve focused on orienting the department more towards design and commercially oriented art in response to student input. The department offers an associate’s degree and a professional certificate, is staffed by five full-time faculty members and more than 25 adjunct instructors, graduates approximately 50 students annually, and runs approximately 60 sections each fall & spring semester at sites across Westchester County. Through my budget oversight the department procured an additional computer lab; during my tenure the department hired two new full-time faculty members, a senior technician, and numerous adjunct instructors. I’ve designed both curricular tracks and physical studio spaces, and my days range from evaluating program goals and adjusting project rubrics to pushing flat files and sweeping floors. Much of my artwork revolves around turning traumas into toys. The boxed sets of painted miniature figures exhume mass murders, police shootings, religious executions. Based on the simplified forms, flat colors, and glossy finishes of early 20th century toy soldiers, I combine these figures with accessories like tiny trucks, trees, and buildings to form thematic “playsets” produced by the fictional company Genuine Models USA. I make the figures as a way of wading through fictions, but the subjects end up finding me.