vita


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5. Recognition and New Roles



Over time, the work I was doing — both creative and pedagogical — began to draw recognition from the university itself. At first, I was surprised by that. The University of Illinois is globally known for its science and engineering programs. It’s a place where computation, mechanics, and innovation drive funding priorities and cultural prestige. But slowly, the institution began to acknowledge that creative work, too, could be a form of research — rigorous, original, and impactful.



Being named a University Scholar was a moment of affirmation. It signaled that the kind of research I was doing – through images, systems, networks, and narrative — was not marginal to the university’s mission, but central to it. A few years later, I was named the inaugural Anthony J. Petullo Professor in Art & Design, an endowed chair created to recognize sustained contributions to creative scholarship and exemplary teaching. These honors weren’t just titles, they were a shift in visibility. They validated that art-making could hold its own alongside scientific discovery, that conceptual and aesthetic inquiry belonged in the research conversation.



Equally meaningful was being named a Distinguished Teacher. That recognition underscored another throughline in my career: genuine pride in being a teacher, and the belief that teaching and making are not separate acts. They feed each other. In the classroom, I didn’t just transmit knowledge, I tried to model inquiry. I encouraged students to trust complexity, to use their own experiences as raw material, and to recognize that not all questions need to be answered. Some need to be lived.



Over the years, I also served in academic leadership roles — first as program chair, then as an administrator across programs. Eventually I held high-profile positions at the college level and in the provost’s office.

My goal in those positions was always the same: to build structures that support risk, experimentation, and cross-disciplinary work. To advocate for art and design not as ornamental, but as epistemological — as a means of exploring unknown territory, engaging new questions, and acquiring new knowledge and new understanding of the world.



These roles gave me perspective on the larger university system. They also gave me opportunities to create, protect, and expand space for others — students, faculty, collaborators — whose voices and visions didn’t always fit neatly within conventional metrics.



I didn’t become an artist to win awards or hold titles. But when those honors come from within institutions that weren’t built to recognize this kind of work, they matter. Not just for me, but for the generations coming up behind me, for the student in the back row who’s quietly making sense of things in her sketchbook. For the ones who see in art not just expression, but investigation. For those who need to know this is possible.