Clark University welcomes new faculty for the 2021-22 academic year

Clark University is pleased to welcome new faculty members for the 2021–22 academic year, who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to areas including psychology, music, geography, management, and — particularly our colleagues from Becker College — interactive media design.

Kathleen Andler

Associate Teaching Professor, Becker School of Design & Technology

Kat Andler is an award-winning designer, creative director, and marketing executive specializing in web design, UI/UX, motion graphics, and interactive media, and has worked with top corporations, start-up companies, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations. She has been a featured speaker at numerous industry, technology, and educational conferences, speaking on topics including printing innovations, database-driven design, and design education. Over more than 20 years of teaching, Kat has taught courses in all areas of graphic design, web design, interactive media, animation, and motion graphics. She integrates her marketing experience into each course so students better understand the motivations and objectives behind the design. Her passion is inspiring students to create meaningful, impactful designs that move beyond visual communication into action. Kat received a bachelor’s from Boston College and an MFA from the Academy of Art University.

Brett Coleman

Assistant Professor, Psychology

Brett Russell Coleman’s work interrogates the intersections of race and power in community settings. His research primarily addresses the context and consequences of racial identity and racial socialization at multiple levels and life stages, including individual identity development among youth of color, whiteness and knowledge of racism as a systemic process, and the role of neoliberal ideology in youth development policy and practice. He has published studies in the American Journal of Community Psychology, Social Psychological and Personality Science, and the Journal of Black Psychology, among others. Brett has received a number of awards and honors, including the Black Heritage Alumni Award of Excellence from Northeastern Illinois University and the Racial and Social Justice Mini-Grant from the Society for Community Research and Action. He comes to Clark from Western Washington University, where he was assistant professor of health and community studies. He earned his Ph.D. in community and prevention research from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 

Paul Cotnoir

Professor of Practice and Dean, Becker School of Design & Technology

Paul Cotnoir’s leadership — at Becker College and now at Clark — builds upon his mechanical engineering expertise and his various administrative roles in higher education, industry, and the public sector in the areas of automation, robotics, fiber optics, economic development, workforce training, and manufacturing design. Under his leadership, the Becker College interactive media program grew from 12 to 600 students in a few short years and garnered constant national recognition by the Princeton Review, reaching a ranking of No. 2 in the world in 2021. He also has been instrumental in the development of the statewide Mass DiGI initiative and the development of summer STEM-based game design programs for high school students and underserved middle school girls. Paul earned a doctorate in manufacturing engineering from WPI.

Ezra Cove

Professor of Practice, Becker School of Design & Technology

Ezra Cove has worked in game development for the past ten years, creating 3D art assets including characters, environments, and props for titles such as “Chivalry: Medieval Warfare,” “Lord of the Rings Online,” and “Infinite Crisis.” Additionally, he creates experimental time-based work using techniques borrowed from commercial game art production. Ezra has taught at Becker College, Emerson College, MassArt, and Mount Ida College. He has a bachelor’s in studio art from Bard College and an MFA in electronic visualization from Mississippi State University.

 

Jessie Darrell-Jarbadan

Associate Professor of Practice, Visual and Performing Arts

Jessie Darrell-Jarbadan is a designer and educator who is passionate about making things, creating spaces for new stories, and finding new ways to tell old stories. Equally comfortable working in a historically accurate theatrical production of Moliere or a new play set in an alternate reality, Jessie has a diverse range ofexperience that she also brings into the classroom to nurture the next generation of thinkers, creators, and leaders. She has designed for the Moses Brown School, Brown University, Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre, and others. Jessie earned a B.A. in music from the University of Hartford and an M.A. in costume history and design from Rhode Island College.

 

Jin Fang

Assistant Professor, School of Management

Jin Fang studies decision-making using social network analysis and topic modeling in service firms. Her research focuses on service firm selection problems and service technology planning problems. Jin received the Best Ph.D. Student Paper Award and Best Application of Theory Award at the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference in 2019 and 2020. Jin earned her Ph.D. in business analytics from Drexel University, where she received the Department Award from 2016 to 2021 and was nominated for the 2021 Research Excellence Award. She holds a master’s in statistics from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s in statistics from the University of Science and Technology of China.

 

Nevin Flanagan

Assistant Teaching Professor, Becker School of Design & Technology

A long-time fantasy reader and tabletop gamer who gravitated towards digital RPGs and Japanese media (manga and anime) during college, Nevin Flanagan is interested in games as a form of immersive storytelling as well as creating new systems of strategy and mental exercise. His focus is on programming and other technical development skills with a particular interest in user interfaces, but he also is an advocate for physical and table-top game development. He holds an MFA in interactive media from Becker College as well as an M.S. in interactive media and game development from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

 

Abby Frazier

Assistant Professor, Geography

Abby Frazier is a geographer and climatologist interested in improving our understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics and impacts of climate change and climate variability. Her research uses geospatial analysis to integrate diverse datasets, including models and observations, to understand the multidisciplinary impacts of climate on freshwater resources and ecosystems over regional and global scales, with a focus on the Pacific Islands. Abby also is interested in climate extremes, particularly the impacts of drought and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation on local hydrology and wildfire regimes. She previously was a research fellow at the East-West Center and a postdoctoral research geographer at the USDA Forest Service Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry. She earned her doctoral and master’s degrees in geography from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and has a B.A. in geography and a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Vermont.

 

Chandra Jack

Assistant Professor, Biology

Chandra Jack is an evolutionary biologist interested in studying the eco-evolutionary dynamics of biotic interactions. Her current research focuses on how microbial population dynamics shape the rhizosphere and influence plant fitness and traits. She also uses a combination of experimental, theoretical, and computational techniques to answer how microbiome dynamics are in turn shaped by host plant genotype and environmental conditions. Before coming to Clark, she was a research associate at Washington State University and a BEACON Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Michigan State University. Chandra received her doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology, master’s in ecology and evolutionary biology, and bachelor’s in biology from Rice University.

 

Gary Holness

Associate Professor, Math and Computer Science

Gary gets an absolute thrill from bringing ideas, theories, and algorithms to life. His work ranges from the theoretical to the applied, including the development of new mathematical models, algorithms for pattern recognition, computational approaches and architectures in support of intelligent systems, prototype systems, and experiments. His career includes 11 years in academia at Delaware State University and 12 years in industry in distributed systems research and development for organizations including Lockheed Martin, Sun Microsystems, and Lotus Development. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science at UMass Amherst, focusing on machine learning, robotics, and statistics; his M.S. at Boston University; and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Tufts University.

 

Cailin Marcel Manson

Associate Professor of Practice, Visual and Performing Arts

Cailin Marcel Manson, director of music performance at Clark, is a baritone and conductor with a 20-year international career as a soloist, conductor, and master teacher. Cailin also is currently music director of the Bennington County Choral Society and the Barn Opera, both in Vermont, and music director of the Keene Chorale in New Hampshire. He also has directed, taught, and performed with symphonies, companies, schools, and in cathedrals around the world, and is a frequent guest conductor, clinician, presenter, panelist, and adjudicator for conferences, competitions, and music festivals. A recognized advocate for community-based classical music organizations, Cailin serves on the boards of Choral Arts New England, the Wagner in Vermont Festival, and the Gift Passion Purpose Project. He earned a bachelor’s in vocal performance at Temple University, and holds magister (master’s) degrees in opera performance and orchestral conducting from the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg.

 

Kevin McGerigle

Associate Professor of Practice, Visual and Performing Arts

Kevin McGerigle is a designer, director, and producer who loves bringing stories to life. Kevin likes his classroom to be a messy place filled with wild ideas. Embracing classical techniques and blending them with cutting-edge technology is at the center of Kevin’s practice. He has designed, directed and produced more than 150 productions all across New England. As well as Clark, his work has been seen at the Majestic Theater, Albany Berkshire Ballet, WAM Theatre, The Colonial, Barrington Stage, The Egg and many others. Kevin earned a B.A. in theatre arts from Clark University and an MFA in theatre design and education from Goddard College

 

Ilir Mborja

Assistant Teaching Professor, Becker School of Design & Technology

Ilir Mborja is a digital artist with a focus on game art. He has taught courses in the field of art and design including Computer Illustration, Raster and Vector, Introduction to Game Design, and many other foundation art courses. Prior to joining Clark, Ilir worked as a 3D generalist for Sky-Skan and National Geographic, creating visual effects and 3D models for the documentary film “Asteroids: Mission Extreme.” Ilir’s research focuses on opioid abuse early prevention through video games and raising awareness of the surging world of artificial intelligence.

 

Rosa Nam

Associate Professor of Practice, Education

Rosa Nam is a former high school teacher and pre-service teacher educator from Houston whose research focuses on critical literacy, diverse adolescent literature, and multicultural education. Her current research projects include understanding the racialized experiences of Asian American university community members through Asian American Critical Race Theory, and examining diverse literature use and attitudes of secondary English Language Arts teachers. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and construction with a specialization in reading, language arts, and literacy education from the University of Houston, and a bachelor’s in English and ethnic studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Scott Niemi

Teaching Professor, Becker School of Design & Technology

Scott Niemi is an award-winning fine artist/illustrator. He has participated in many shows at local and national levels; his work is in the collections of Children’s Hospital of Boston (Peabody, Mass.), the Schacknow Museum of Fine Arts (Plantation, Fla.), and UMass Medical Center (Worcester), among others. His work also is featured in hundreds of private collections across the globe. Prior to coming to Clark, Scott was a professor of interactive media at Becker College. Previously, he taught at Franklin Pierce University and Florida Atlantic University. He also has held senior positions at the Thoreau Gallery (Rindge, N.H.), Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art (Lake Worth, Fla.), and Galerie 624 (West Palm Beach, Fla.). Scott earned his MFA in visual art from Florida Atlantic University.

 

Olufemi Odegbile

Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Olufemi Odegbile researches efficient and scalable policy enforcement in computer networks. His current research focuses on supporting network security through traffic measurement by increasing the performance of monitoring hierarchical flows, which are found in typical datacenters; developing an efficient protocol to automatically detect missing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags used in the Internet of Things; and developing a traffic visualizer for passive network traffic monitoring and various security applications. Olufemi received a doctorate in computer science from the University of Florida, a master’s in computer science from Boston University, a master’s in economics from the University of Ca’Foscari (Venice, Italy), and a bachelor’s in mathematics from the University of Ibadan (Nigeria).

 

Jonathan Rudder

Associate Teaching Professor, Becker School of Design & Technology

Jonathan Rudder is co-founder, with his brother, Douglas, of RudderHaven Publishing Group PBC, a creative studio that provides valuable and relevant commercial experience to current students, recent graduates, and unemployed professionals in book publishing, game development, and other creative industries. Inspired at an early age by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Jonathan became an avid reader — and later writer — of fantasy and science fiction. He served for almost nine years as the copyeditor, writer, and official Tolkien lore-expert for the award-winning massively multiplayer online game “The Lord of the Rings Online” by Turbine, finishing his career there as a content designer. Jonathan graduated with a B.A. in English from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and an MFA in creative writing from Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla.

 

Amanda Theinert

Assistant Teaching Professor, Becker School of Design & Technology

Amanda Theinert is an interactive media artist and game designer who has worked in the fields of digital art and higher education for 12 years, most recently as assistant professor and director of the Master of Fine Arts program at Becker College. She teaches courses in game design and development, the psychology of games, traditional and digital art, as well as production and team management. At Becker, Amanda contributed to the development of a new MFA in interactive media and helped build community-focused STEM outreach programs. Her personal work focuses on creating interactive installation art and games that investigate new ways of combining digital and physical media, blurring the lines between the tangible and virtual. Amanda earned her bachelor’s in interactive media from Becker College and her MFA in computer art from the School of Visual Arts.

 

Terrasa Ulm

Professor of Practice, Becker School of Design & Technology

Terrasa Ulm is an emergent media artist, programmer, and developer of interactive media whose current research includes efficacy comparisons between PC and VR environments for education and the psychodynamics of virtual avatars in emergent media. More broadly, their studies and practice focus on games for change, the impact of artificial intelligence on new media, and extended reality [XR/AR/VR]. Terrasa has developed a number of game titles, working as both designer and software developer, in the ‘serious’ and experimental games space for PC, mobile, and XR, and their most recent exhibited work centers on interactive, fictive, live-action installations. Terrasa received an MFA from Lesley University, a master’s in interactive media from Parsons, the New School, and a bachelor’s in computer science from Smith College.