
Faculty
Our faculty work closely with every student, connecting them to local professional opportunities and building the kind of visual and analytical thinking that equips them to excel.
Department Chair
Catherine Lusheck is Chair of the Department of Art + Architecture and Associate Professor of Art History & Museum Studies. She holds a doctorate in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a specialist in early modern European art and curatorial practice. Her research interests include Renaissance drawings culture, early modern visual rhetoric and the classical tradition, and artistic emulation and self-representation in the art of Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640...
- PhD, History of Art, University of California, Berkeley (December 2000)
- MA, History of Art, University of California, Berkeley (May 1992)
- BA, Political Science, magna cum laude, DePauw University...
Program Director
Liat Berdugo is an artist and writer whose work investigates embodiment, labor, and militarization in relation to capitalism, technological utopianism, and the Middle East. Her work has been exhibited and screened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), MoMA PS1 (New York), Transmediale (Berlin), V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam), and The Wrong Biennale (online), among others. Her writing appears in Rhizome, Temporary Art Review, Real Life, Places, and The Institute for...
- MFA, Rhode Island School of Design, Digital + Media, 2013
- BA, Brown University, Mathematics, Philosophy, 2008
Full-Time Faculty
Noopur Agarwal is a practicing visual communication designer dedicated to increasing critical public engagement with issues of global and local concern. Her practice is based both on service: working collaboratively and interdisciplinarily to make a strategic difference within an organization; and authorship: producing exploratory works. Her creative output often takes the form of “experiential graphic design” (physical and digital interactive environmental graphics) and includes brand identity...
- Temple University, MFA in Graphic and Interactive Design, 2014
- The Ohio State University, BSD in Visual Communication Design, 2007
Rachel Beth Egenhoefer is a design professor, artist and writer, whose work integrates technology, craft, and design. Her current focus is on sustainability and systems thinking as related to behavior change.
Egenhoefer is currently a full professor in design at the University of San Francisco, where she has taught since 2009. She serves on the College of Arts & Sciences Sustainability Task Force, the steering committee for the Center for Teaching Excellence, and a variety of other committees...
- UC San Diego, MFA, 2004
- Maryland Institute College of Arts, BFA, 2002
- Sustainability
- Systems Thinking
- Community Engaged Learning
- Design Pedagogy
- Strategic Planning and Curricular Assessment for Higher Ed
Carrie Hott is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. Her work is informed by a roving research practice that explores the current and historic infrastructural systems that mediate our collective experiences and perceptions. She has presented her work as part of exhibitions and projects across the country, most recently at Bay Area Now 8 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Museum of Capitalism in Oakland, as well as a permanent project, The Key Room, at...
- MFA, San Francisco Art Institute
- BFA, Arizona State University
Stuart McKee is an Associate Professor of Design at the University of San Francisco. As an environmental graphic designer, Stuart has designed exhibition typography for the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland (as Senior Graphic Designer for the Burdick Group; San Francisco); and the United States Pavilion at the 1992 World's Fair in Seville, Spain (as Senior Graphic Designer for Staples & Charles Ltd; Washington, DC). As a print designer...
- MFA in Design, Yale University
- BFA, Washington University in Saint Louis
Part-Time Faculty
Brian Bartz is a new media artist and educator. His practice interrogates digital network technologies through a material lens, grappling with the politics surrounding their popular conception as immaterial and abstract. His sculptures, animations, and installations engage with our status as digital subjects and the endemic anxieties therein, seeking to situate them within larger frameworks of corporate and state surveillance, extractive industry, and the inconspicuous embedding of devices...
- UC Berkeley, MFA in Art Practice, 2020
- Reed College, BA in Studio Art, 2017
- Web design
- Sculpture
- Photography
Sabiha Basrai is a member of Design Action Collective — a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to serving social justice movements with art, graphic design, and web development. She is co-coordinator of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, where she works with racial justice organizers to fight against Islamophobia, and is part of the Center for Political Education advisory board.
- BS, Art & Design, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo
Alexa Ann Bonomo is an interaction designer, researcher, and educator. She holds a creative practice situated in net and new media art. Her notable work has been shown in various settings including International Symposium for Electronic Art, The Exploratorium in San Francisco, and Axis Gallery in Sacramento. Alexa holds an MFA in Design and has a teaching practice where she has taught several courses in digital and new media at University of San Francisco and University of California, Davis...
- UC Davis, MFA in Design, 2020
- Towson University, BFA in Digital Art and Design, 2017
- Creative coding
- Interaction design
- Net art
Justin Carder is an interdisciplinary designer and artist based in Oakland. He is the former director of 826 Valencia's pirate-themed storefront, the founder of the experimental storefront/publisher Wolfman Books, and a former YBCA Public Imagination fellow. Currently, Justin is the co-host of the design podcast, "40 Trillion DPI" (with Helen Ip) and the designer-in-residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts.
- UC Santa Cruz, BA in Politics, 2004
Ivy Climacosa is a Philippine-born, Bay Area-raised graphic designer and small business owner. Coming from a background of grassroots organizing and over a decade in graphic design, she utilizes creative work as a vehicle for exploration, solidarity, and amplification.
- San Francisco State University, BA in Art Education, 2007
Niki has worked in the graphic design industry for over 30 years, utilizing a wide-range of skills in graphic design, creative direction, copy writing, and general chaos organization to create logos and collateral, publications and catalogs, web site designs, and even a short film and half a dozen or so commercial videos.
Niki earned a degree in English from California State University, Sacramento and thrives in the beautifully fuzzy place between the two-dimensional print and online world...
- Council on International Education Exchange, TEFL certification, 2022
- CSU Sacramento, BA in English, 1996
- Sacramento City College, AA in English, 1993
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
- InDesign
Sandra Kelch has worked in the design field for more than 20 years, and has received awards for her publications from Adobe, Print, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and the Society of Publication Designers. She received two degrees in graphic design from The Cooper Union School of Art and The Cranbrook Academy of Art. Most of Sandra's career has been focused on socially responsible design: promoting nonprofit organizations, branding, publication design and infographics/signage. Sandra has...
Scott Kildall has been working with art, technology, and education for over 15 years. He focuses on transforming data from the natural environment, such as water quality, air quality and plant data into sound installations, sculptures, and video works. He uses custom electronics to create generative, data-driven experiences with uncertain outcomes.
His artwork has been exhibited internationally at venues including the New York Hall of Science, Transmediale, the Venice Biennale, the Vancouver...
- School of the Art Institute, MFA in Studio, 2006
- Brown University, BA in Political Philosophy, 1991
- Art and technology
- Design
- Computer science
- Philosophy
Jules Litman-Cleper (they/she) is a New Media Artist and Educator born and raised in the Bay Area (the unceeded land of the Ohlone). Their work seeks to understand our sensory and cognitive inter-dependency on technological and ecological systems. They enjoy working with Spatial Simulation, Natural Computation and Generative Algorithms. They have exhibited work at Krowswork, Aggregate Space, New York Studio School, with performances at The Lab, ATA, SFEMF, CCRMA and Gray Area Center for the Arts...
- UC Davis, MS candidate, Evolutionary Neurobiology Lab, Psychology, 2023
- MIT, MS in Design and Computation, 2016
- UC Davis, BA in Arts, Minor in Creative Writing, 2011
- Creative coding
- 3D modeling and animation
- Digital fabrication
- Experimental art and design
- Interdisciplinary science and art
Nico van Dongen is an educator, fine art photographer, and freelance designer. He has worked as art director for several startups, focusing on design, photography, and business development. In addition to his professional work, Nico has 20 years of post-secondary classroom and administrative experience in art and design education.
- Royal Academy of Art, the Hague Netherlands BFA Photography
- Graphic design
- Fine art
- Commercial photography
Dr. Alessandra Wood is a design historian with an eye towards the future. She studied design history & theory and is obsessed with applying that knowledge to understand what makes products beautiful/useful/successful, and what inspires people to love those products. With expertise in scaling design processes, she has a refined eye for style, and strives to make art and design accessible to all. Her current role as VP of Style at Modsy has allowed her work on the compelling challenge of...
- University of Delaware, PhD in American Civilization with a focus on Design History
- Parsons, The New School for Design, MA in The History of Decorative and Design
- The Johns Hopkins University, BA...