Professor (of Cartoon & Comic Arts!)

A quick update on a couple recent developments: the first being news on an ascension into the upper ranks of academia with the title of actual professor, and the second, the long-awaited enshrinement of my Cartoon & Comic Arts course into the official UAF course catalog.

This follows fifty-five-ish semesters as an adjunct (technically “Adjunct Lecturer”), then the past couple years as a “Term Instructor” (one as bipartite, then as tripartite with expanded duties ie attending meetings + sitting on committees), and now, starting this fall, as a professor (technically “Term Assistant Professor”). Note this is non-tenure track, with the next rungs on the ladder being Term Associate, then full Term. Also I’m additionally endowed with the designation of “lead instructor” of the drawing department (meaning it’s now all my fault), tacitly tasked with studio maintenance and other duties, but don’t have to worry overmuch about updating the ol’ CV and the stress of standing for review. Just remember to shave and get a haircut every once in a while, and maybe watch my mouth/mind the manners a wee bit more.

As mentioned here earlier in some cryptic teaser posts, this goes hand-in-glove with my promise to reward any advancement in the ranks with the creation and development of courses like this (next: Pen & Ink, Illustration, Caricature, Tattooing etc.). It’s a consolidation of all my experiences from SCAD + elsewhere, and as a working professional in the field, and represents the grand summation of all my educational priorities: mainly, that comics count. 

The "Buffet"

Here’s a couple backlinks to previous posts recapping 2020’s of the VAA comics class and the summer sessions course, for both of which it was my last time teaching them. One of the things I’m really looking forward to is literally drawing from the voluminous archives of former student works with which to continue to amaze and inspire the next generation of budding talents. 

Excerpted sample student pages

All along throughout my teaching career I have incorporated sequential art lessons into the classroom, as the academic advantages are very familiar to regular readers of Ink & Snow. Establishing the educational legitimacy of this medium as a uniquely powerful and popular means to express and address a limitless diversity of topics and issues, as well as develop technical rendering skills in the studio, has been an ever-evolving personal mission of mine. Also, the results speak for themselves.

Excerpted sample student pages

From flunking art classes in high school before dropping out, then dropping out again from a community college and then taking ten years to finally get a degree, plus another decade to earn the terminal, it has been a convoluted path - “three steps forward and two steps back” - but I’ve never stopped going forward, and that’s a meta-lesson well worth passing on. 

(Still the best student caricature of me ever made)

That, and keep making comics.