Faculty — Visual Communication Design

Apart from our main faculty, many courses about new and experimental topics are also taught by visiting professors and graduate students.

	Chris Jackson Associate Professor cbjpgd@rit.edu 585-475-5823	Chris Jackson is the graduate director for the Visual Communication Design MFA program. He teaches courses in interactive design and development for applied computer graphics, 2D and 3D animation, and motion graphics. Professionally, his work has received more than 25 national and international awards. Prof. Jackson publishes and presents his research at Adobe MAX, SIGGRAPH, UCDA, TypeCon, and the Society for Technical Communication. He is the author of "Flash + After Effects," "Flash Cinematic Techniques," and "Flash 3D: Animation, Interactivity, and Games" (all from Focal Press). He continues to lecture, teach, design, and serve as a consultant for worldwide corporations and nonprofit organizations.
	Daniel DeLuna Associate Professor dxdpph@rit.edu 585-475-2814	Daniel DeLuna has a background in fine arts and computer graphics. He teaches courses in motion graphics design, kinetic typography and a host of 3D courses that focus on animation, rendering and compositing. Before making the move from New York City to Rochester, NY, Prof. DeLuna worked on motion design projects, both large and small, for companies such as MTV, Atari, The Discovery Channel, the History Channel, SpikeTV, PBS and many others.
	Marla Schweppe Professor mkspph@rit.edu 585-475-2754	Early in her career Marla Schweppe designed for theatre, television and movies in New York City and other theaters around the country. She has traveled to over 30 countries designing for a dance company and has been working and teaching in the field for more than 25 years at Ohio State, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Northwestern University. Since joining the faculty at RIT, she has developed the graduate and undergraduate programs in computer animation, added 3D courses in the Computer Graphics Design program and built the BFA in Three-Dimensional Digital Design, which she now chairs. Her creative work includes the incorporation of her theatrical background into performances on the virtual stage, animatronics, physical computing and tangible media, surgical simulation, and collaborative support for visualization and simulation of information and ideas.
	Nancy Ciolek Associate Professor nacfad@rit.edu 585-475-3430	Nancy Ciolek is an Associate Professor in the School of Design, and chair of the Graphic Design department. She has over 25 years of experience in graphic design and serves as a design consultant for ICS, Inc., an international innovation consulting firm based in Rochester, NY, in addition to previously working as a designer at James Bare Design, The Williams Agency, and St. Mary of the Woods College. Her work has been published in Contemporary Masterworks by St. James Press (UK), IDS Publishing/Media 2005 (online), and in the SIGGRAPH 2006 conference proceedings; and has presented at the Kern Conference, the UCDA Design Education Summits, SIGGRAPH, and TypeCon. She has been a conference program reviewer for UCDA and the Taiwan Association of Digital Media Design international conference. She has been an invited guest speaker and given workshops at various conferences and universities.
	Shaun Foster Assistant Professor scffaa@rit.edu 585-475-7124	Shaun Foster has a background in business and visual media. An award winning visual artist, he has done work in 3D animation, educational interactive multimedia, visual effects, and compositing. His broad range of interests are connected by research focusing on how technologies work together with new and innovative multimedia applications.