Faculty

Stephen St. Amant, adjunct assistant teaching professor, teaches Introduction to Sculpture. Stephen is an artist, marketer, and musician living in central Pennsylvania. His work is not tied to a specific medium, but woodworking and cabinetmaking have been longtime loves. In his drawings, sculptures, and design work, craftsmanship and attention to detail are a continuous thread. Stephen’s work often uses everyday objects and routines as entry-points to considering larger ideas. Stephen writes a daily blog about productivity, creativity, and personal disposition at www.savenwood.com.

Benjamin Andrew is an assistant teaching professor at Penn State, specializing in online education and interdisciplinary design. He has worked as a graphic and web designer for clients ranging from political campaigns to research teams at NASA. His fine art practice explores the frontiers of storytelling by leveraging participatory art and digital media to imagine strange new futures. He previously taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Johns Hopkins University; though he misses Baltimore, he enjoys his new home on the internet.

Ian Brill is an instructor of digital art for Penn State World Campus. His work focuses on the accumulation of form through process. Through the design of interactive, performative, and multisensorial environments, he considers boundaries of becoming (versus being) and our immersive relationship with technology. His installations, performances, and writing have been presented internationally at conferences, festivals, and galleries.

Anna Divinsky is an instructor of art and the lead faculty of the digital arts certificate program offered by the School of Visual Arts and Penn State World Campus. In addition to teaching online, she oversees online training of new instructors and graduate assistants teaching in the program. Her goal is to foster close communication between the students and faculty. Being an artist inspires and informs her approach to how she authors and teaches online, integrating studio techniques and hands-on art-making. She works primarily with fiber, creating paintings on silk, sculptural forms, and site-specific installations. Her love for pattern, design, intricate detail, and repetition is reflected in her course's requirements.

Dr. Eduardo Navas teaches on the principles of cultural analytics and digital humanities in the School of Visual Arts, College of Arts and Architecture, at Penn State, researching the creative and political role of recyclability and remix in art, media, and culture. He has lectured internationally, and he produces art and publishes on remix studies.

Courtney Redding is an adjunct lecturer with the School of Visual Arts and teaches courses in the digital multimedia design program and the digital arts certificate program. Her work encompasses the art and design world, with a focus on multiple media forms of expression. Redding's influences are from a diverse array of disciplines. From science and history to the natural world and technological field, her imagery integrates these backgrounds into a philosophy of symbols and a personal typographic and textural array.

Leanna Rosas’ teaching and new media studio work is concerned with issues of identity, inequality, irony and manipulation, and the various relationships within visual culture. Her recent work is in music composition, collaborating with the visual work of partner Carlos Rosas, Penn State School of Visual Art, and the audio remixing of Robert Dansby, California Institute of the Arts. Much of the work resulting from their collaborations seeks to explore means in which one identifies with the continually evolving conditions within a technology-driven culture.

Christine J. Shanks teaches and creates work in both traditional studio and digital media. She applies her design background to her multifaceted work in academia by utilizing user-experience principles, creativity, and design thinking in her curriculum and pedagogy. As an educator, her primary goal is to establish a supportive classroom that emboldens students to explore and refine their process, motivations, and skills. She feels her work in academia and design are intertwined; new projects and pursuits in one field develop from ideas and exploration in the other.