Information Science

INFO alum, Googler joins CMDI Advisory Board, teaches new social justice course for Union Theological Seminary

Allyson Maturey — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:56:30 +0000

INFO alum, Googler joins CMDI Advisory Board, teaches new social justice course for Union Theological Seminary Allyson Maturey Fri, 01/09/2026 - 17:56

Shamika Klassen (INFOSciPhD‘24) started to serve as an Advisory Board Member for the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information (CMDI) this fall. She served on a career panel during the annual Board Meeting. Klassen is a UX Researcher for Google in California.

This summer, Klassen taught a new online course, “The Technowomanism in Praxis: Critical Engagement at the Intersection of Social Justice and Technology” for Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The course took students across liberation theologies and their community struggles and triumphs with technology. Students learned about technowomanism, an ethical framework grounded in womanism that focuses on social justice issues in and around technology, as a tool for critique and assessment.

“One of my biggest takeaways from this course is a deeper understanding of how technology, theology, race, gender, sexuality, and ecology intersect in ways that shape both oppression and liberation. I especially appreciated how the course centered Black feminist, womanist, and Indigenous perspectives, pushing me to think critically about whose voices are amplified and whose are silenced in digital spaces and technological innovation. The class helped me connect systemic issues of power and access with everyday technologies and the broader narratives they perpetuate.”
Student feedback from course evaluation

Shamika Klassen (INFOSciPhD‘24) started to serve as an Advisory Board Member for CMDI this fall. Klassen also taught a new online course this past summer for Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

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Celebrating students at our fall 2025 showcase

Allyson Maturey — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:33:04 +0000

Celebrating students at our fall 2025 showcase Allyson Maturey Fri, 01/09/2026 - 17:33

Photos by Kimberly Coffin

INFO’s Fall Showcase was on Wednesday, December 3, 2025, in the UMC 235. The event is an opportunity for students taking information science courses to share their class projects and research with the �� Boulder community. This science-fair-like experience illustrates how students’ passions, such as boosting mental health, interacting with music, and working to protect the environment, tie into their study of technology.

INFO seniors presented their capstone projects - aspects of their portfolios. Below are several examples from capstone groups - the groups put their data science, research, AI, and UX design skills to work!

BeanStrata: A knowledge base and community hub that connects coffee lovers to each other and recommends new combinations, pairings, etc based on their existing interests. (Nin Kongla, Mitchell Rheins)

ENFP Connect: An interactive career guidance website that supports high schoolers who want to understand what industries their skills are applicable to. (Enya Bayaraa, Nate Habteyonas, Petros Tareke, Fnan Yonas)

Raven: A web extension that provides resale buyers with comparisons to the rest of the market to make better buying decisions. (Katherine Davis, Nick Haseman, Ely Cariveau, Alex Williams)

Sensed: A sensory and emotional music journal that turns sound into color, texture, and shared experiences. (Nathanael Elias, Luke Lommatzsch, Patrick Mancuso, Emelia Mantz, Inaki Sayrols)

Spotter: A computer vision model that tracks workout performance (specifically squats) and provides real-time tips on how to improve. (Matthew Cicero, Gilberto Corral, Cephas Kim, Finn Sargent, Christian Valentino)

Kate Davis, an INFO senior, explains about Raven, a web extension that provides resale buyers with comparisons to the rest of the market to make better buying decisions, to fellow students.

Emelia Mantz (middle) explaining Sensed, a sensory and emotional music journal that turns sound into color, texture, and shared experiences.

Gilberto Corral explaining Spotter, a computer vision model that tracks workout performance (specifically squats) and provides real-time tips on how to improve.

Hilna Yonas, an INFO student, sharing about the Religious Engagement Survey he designed in INFO 4603 Survey Research Design this Fall.

INFO Senior Lauren Ward shares about redesigning Delbert Hunter Arboretum and Botanical Garden’s website to a Showcase participant.

Students share feedback on a project for INFO 5609 User-Center Design.

The INFO Showcase is an opportunity for students taking information science courses to share their class projects and research with the �� Boulder community.

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INFO PhD student spends summer with LAS and SCADS Conference, work spurs $130,000 LAS grant

Allyson Maturey — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:16:37 +0000

INFO PhD student spends summer with LAS and SCADS Conference, work spurs $130,000 LAS grant Allyson Maturey Fri, 01/09/2026 - 17:16

Joshua Paup [INFO PhD student] spent his summer at the Summer Conference on Applied Data Science (SCADS) at North Carolina State's Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS) in Raleigh, North Carolina. Over an 8-week period, Paup collaborated with fellow academics, industry, and government partners to tackle the grand challenge problem of generating tailored daily reports (TLDRs) for knowledge workers within the U.S. Intelligence Community. Some of the projects he engaged with included identifying pain points within intelligence analyst workflows for Large Learning Models (LLM) and recommender systems interventions and evaluating the performance of recommender system outputs.

Paup’s work from this summer program later informed the project,"Capture and Recommendation of Analysis Workflows for AI." Paup and Professor Robin Burke were awarded $130,000 from the LAS at NC State for 2026. The project explores information seeking and analysis workflows through a collaboration with the students and faculty in the JRNL 4572/5572 News Corps capstone course here at �� Boulder!. The goal is to build tools to capture and represent analytic activities and generalize them into workflows that can be shared with others performing similar tasks and monitored by more experienced managers. The research team will focus particularly on AI tools since norms around their use are not well-established.

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All together now: 2025 at CMDI

Amanda J. McManus — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 02:22:15 +0000

All together now: 2025 at CMDI Amanda J. McManus Mon, 12/15/2025 - 19:22

In a year where the college’s biggest story was its name change—following its integration with the environmental design department—CMDI’s community also found itself at the center of the biggest conversations shaping our time—from sustainability and A.I., to media literacy and the future of journalism.

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Data plans

Regan Widergren — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 22:03:01 +0000

Data plans Regan Widergren Tue, 11/18/2025 - 15:03

Hannah Stewart

Photos by Kimberly Coffin and Patrick Campbell

When Josie Mahoney’s best friend died in high school, his parents asked for her help with
their son’s social media.

Of course, she said yes, but she didn’t know where to start. Should they delete his account, losing access to the photos he posted and was tagged in? Or archive it as a digital memorial?

“It was distressing,” said Mahoney (InfoSci’25). “I think a clinic would’ve been really great because at least there’s someone to talk to who knows what they’re doing.”

Now she’s one of those people: In her senior year, she joined CMDI’s Digital Legacy Clinic, led by Jed Brubaker, an associate professor of information science.

“The clinic is something you can’t bottle—there’s an energy there,” she said. “It’s the coolest class I’ve been a part of because of how it prepares us for the real world.”

Part of that is how the course is structured. Brubaker builds in collaborative, project-based assignments that mimic the workplaces Mahoney and her classmates will graduate into. But it also comes from the market need for a solution to what happens to our data when we die.

As an academic research collaborator at Facebook, Brubaker helped develop the platform’s memorial account practices, but saw a much larger problem than just social media—photos, videos, text messages, bank accounts and so on. Through a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant, he created a pro-bono, law school-style clinic to help people maintain their digital legacies.

“It felt like a really unique moment where my research, teaching missions and a desire to do public service perfectly overlapped,” he said.

‘Pre-mortem’ support

Many clients come to the Digital Legacy Clinic in search of what students call “pre-mortem” support—getting a handle on what to do with their data now, so their families don’t have as much stress later.

I appreciated the students’ compassion and that they’re thinking about ways to mitigate the overwhelm.”

Corinna Robbins

That was the case with Corinna Robbins.

“I wonder what will happen to all the digital detritus that feels meaningful to us, and I wonder how my family will handle mine, or how I should handle my parents’,” Robbins said. “My son is 16 right now. He may not be interested in my inner life at this moment, but I bet one
day he will be.”

Unlike her mother, who had a drawer or two full of family photos, Robbins said she had thousands of unorganized photos on about 25 hard drives. That alone felt daunting, but equally disappointing was losing a blog she kept as a young adult, filled with personal essays and photography.

With help from the students, she learned about different cloud solutions to organize her photo collection, as well as the Wayback Machine, an online archive where she was able to recover most of her blog.

“It was lovely to be reconnected with those artifacts of my younger, former self,” Robbins said. “I appreciated the students’ compassion and that they’re thinking about ways to mitigate the overwhelm.”

Students in the Digital Legacy Clinic provide client support while researching how different platforms treat user data after death.

‘A measly number’

Part of the clinic’s effort is dedicated to fieldwork, in which students review platforms’ policies for specifics on user accounts and data after death. They’ve found that only 13% of platforms offer functional support, “a measly number for something that will happen to 100% of us,” Brubaker said.

The rest of their time is spent on client cases and building out the clinic’s functionality. Jack Manning (CTD’24), an information science master’s student, built a chatbot to push students’ boundaries, ensuring they encounter a range of situations and build their confidence for working with clients who may be grieving.

“These are undergraduate students, not mental health professionals,” he said. “And there’s potential for harm in those sensitive communications.”

Manning, like Mahoney, joined the clinic in the fall and repeated the class last spring. While the first semester was spent developing the framework and assessing clients’ needs, the second focused on creating a knowledge base and onboarding system—like the chatbot—to benefit future students.

As part of her portfolio project last fall, Mahoney focused on leadership and outreach—so on top of helping clients, she also developed a mini knowledge base with resources to train future students to be sensitive in working with the public.

“Now I can say I was a team leader, a project manager and in charge of the timeline and what we were doing,” she said.

Students said that real-world emphasis shows up in other ways, too.

“I’ve learned how to work with people on different teams and bounce ideas off each other,” said Oliver Kochenderfer (InfoSci’25). “I’ve gotten so much teamwork experience, and it’s been cool to have a teacher who acts as a manager guiding us toward one big goal.”

Brubaker said it’s important to remember that although college is a time of exploration and experience, one of its main responsibilities is preparing students for life after graduation.

“I hope the clinic remains a place that has a public impact while also being a place for both my students and me to learn,” he said. “I love taking humanistic or social science issues and thinking about how to implement that in the code. We’re human-touch first. More than a solution, people need to be heard.”

Learn more about the clinic

The Digital Literacy Clinic

Hannah Stewart graduated from CMDI in 2019 with a degree in communication. She covers student news for the college.

Photographer Kimberly Coffin graduated from CMDI in 2018 with degrees in media production and strategic communication.

When Jed Brubaker established the Digital Legacy Clinic—to help people make a plan for their data after their deaths—he saw it as a perfect blend of teaching and public service.

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10 for 10: Centers making an impact

Amanda J. McManus — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 21:20:40 +0000

10 for 10: Centers making an impact Amanda J. McManus Mon, 11/17/2025 - 14:20

Centers and labs at CMDI are important not just because of the insights discovered by the researchers and creatives working within them, but because of the impact they offer to the public.

Here are some signature labs and centers from CMDI’s first decade.

Center for Communication and Democratic Engagement: Aims to learn from deliberation, dialogue and educational events tied to communication and democratic practice.
Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media: Creates opportunities for the public to engage with documentary films, especially through the signature Mimesis festival, in Boulder.
Center for Environmental Journalism: Journalists who complete a fellowship from the center have been responsible for award-winning work on environmental issues.
Center for Media, Religion and Culture: Studies the complex relationship between media and religion in an entangled world.
Community Engagement, Design and Research Center: Partners with communities at home and abroad to build resilient, equitable cities and neighborhoods.
Immersive Media Lab: Invites people to explore augmented and virtual reality environments to develop different perspectives on emerging challenges.
Media Archaeology Lab: A peerless collection of obsolete, but functional, technology to experiment with and imagine roads not taken in tech and society.
Neuro D Lab: Explores the intersection of design, neurodiversity, equity and innovation to ensure designs—from products to wayfinding—work intuitively for all users.
Sustainability and Storytelling Lab: Aims to understand how stories influence the ways we practice sustainability and shame unsustainable methods.
Visual Evidence Lab: Studies how the legal system can be better equipped to handle video and photographic evidence presented in court, including deepfakes and generative A.I.

Here are 10 centers and labs that have created public impact in the college’s first decade.

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10 for 10: Notable newsmakers

Amanda J. McManus — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 06:11:51 +0000

10 for 10: Notable newsmakers Amanda J. McManus Thu, 11/13/2025 - 23:11

Because of the multidisciplinary nature of their work—and their fearlessness in confronting the biggest problems—CMDI faculty are regularly featured in local and national media. Here are 10 times over the past decade when major news outlets have featured our faculty.

The New Republic: Nathan Schneider wrote an essay on the Slow Food movement, arguing a slow computing approach could repair our experiences with technology. May 19, 2015.
The Denver Post: Chris Vargo studied Twitter data to see how vaccine misinformation spread and took hold in particular American communities. Sept. 27, 2017.
The Washington Post: Angie Chuang wrote an op-ed on the problems her race and journalism class tries to solve, and the struggle businesses like Starbucks have faced in confronting them. June 13, 2018.
Forbes: Casey Fiesler sat for a Q&A on the need for ethics in the technology industry, particularly social media. Jan. 14, 2021.
The Guardian: Elizabeth Skewes talked about her research on whether news media covering school shootings influences future acts of violence. May 12, 2023.
Scientific American: Leysia Palen talked about the dangers of information isolation during disasters that knock out telecommunications services. Sept. 11, 2023.
KUNC/NPR: Josh Shepperd talked about the history and influence of public media, especially amid great economic change in the journalism industry. April 10, 2024.
The New York Times: Following the publication of her most recent book, on romance writing, Chris Larson explained the circumstances behind the breakup of Romance Writers of America. July 24, 2024.
The Associated Press: Erin Willis was interviewed about her work on patient influencers and the language used in pharmaceuticals advertising. Nov. 14, 2024.
Denver7 (ABC): Jed Brubaker discussed the launch of the Digital Legacy Clinic and the need to proactively manage our digital footprints before we die. Dec. 11, 2024.

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10 for 10: Projects that inspire

Amanda J. McManus — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 05:34:46 +0000

10 for 10: Projects that inspire Amanda J. McManus Sun, 09/28/2025 - 23:34 Hannah Stewart

CMDI students develop their creative, analytical and investigative skills through hands-on projects that prepare them for the challenges they’ll encounter at work. Here are 10 impressive projects from the college’s first decade, along with a look at where these students are now.

Jacob Glazier (StratComm’17) worked with fellow advertising students to create ��’s commercial The Moment Before, which ran during football games and on television.

He is a freelance director and cinematographer, with some of his work gaining recognition at the Denver Film and Best Short festivals, among others.

Tessa Diestel (Jour’18) was on the 2018 Carnegie-Knight News21 fellowship team that covered “Hate in America,” which received a Murrow award, among others. The fellowship brings together top journalism students nationwide to report and produce in-depth, multimedia projects for major news outlets.

Diestel and Ashley Hopko (Jour’19) worked with students from 19 universities, reporting on hate crimes, racism and intolerance in 36 states. Diestel is currently an associate producer at ESPN.

Francesca Rubin (Comm’19) was director of partnerships for the 2019 TEDx�� event—the first time the annual speaker series was organized entirely by the college. She and her team secured sponsorships from various companies to support the event.

She is now an account executive at the fundraising consulting firm Hudson Farris, in New York City.

Megan Weber (StratComm’19) was on the Project Reface team that won gold at the national 2018 Young Ones award show organized by The One Club.

She is currently at the advertising agency McCann, in New York City, working as an art director.

Julia Muell and Megan Lange (both StratComm’21) won gold at the national 2019 Young Ones show for their Inspired World campaign.

Muell now works as an art director at Wieden + Kennedy, in New York City; Lange is a copywriter for TBWA\Chiat\Day, in Los Angeles.

Max Gannett (InfoSci’22, MS’23) and Jay Ghosh (InfoSci’22) completed a data visualization project that analyzed more than 600,000 tweets to identify target audiences of disinformation campaigns.

“The meaning and work learned on this project launched a friendship that allowed us to start a company and keep combining politics and data science to create change,” Gannett said.

That company, Washington-based Delphi Intelligence LLC, offers data science consulting services; in addition to his work with Delphi, Gannett is a special assistant in the U.S. Senate.

Audrey Mayes (MMediaSt’22) launched a podcast, Where the Aud Things Are, highlighting rural perspectives related to wildlife conservation, as the final project of her master’s program.

She then hosted Remington’s podcast as a marketing manager with the Kinetic Group before transitioning to the health and wellness space. She currently serves as the director of marketing and strategy at Lifeplus.

Reporter Hannah Prince (Jour’22) and photojournalist Alex Levy (Jour’22) investigated fentanyl use for a reporting honors project, which was published in a collaboration between the �� Independent and The Bold.

After pursuing a career in public relations, Levy switched to product marketing and is now with Zayo Group; he also runs a professional cycling program.

Prince is a segment producer of special events at ABC News, covering daily news and producing major U.S. and international news coverage. She embedded with ABC’s investigative unit in Uvalde, Texas, to report on gun violence following the 2022 school shooting, and was an associate producer for the Emmy-winning news documentary It Happened Here—A Year in Uvalde.

Jordan Wirfs-Brock (MJour’11, PhDInfoSci’22) wrote an article for Inside Energy, a collaborative journalism initiative, that includes a history of U.S. coal production set to music. She is an assistant professor of computer science at Whitman College, teaching students creative, multisensory ways to communicate data.

She is working on an NSF-funded project to develop tools that allow people to reflect on the sounds in their lives.

Virtual reality experiences in her classes inspired skiing instructor Natanya Chatfield (CritMedia’24) to create Virtual Slopes: Adaptive Ski Adventure at Eldora Mountain. The project—a first-person skiing journey for VR headsets and YouTube—makes adaptive skiing more accessible by breaking down barriers people with disabilities face in starting the sport. She is now a social media intern with a local Denver studio.

Hannah Stewart graduated from CMDI in 2019 with a degree in communication. She covers student news for the college.

Here are 10 student projects from the college’s first decade and where those alumni are now.

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10 for 10: Alumni who impress

Amanda J. McManus — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 21:25:06 +0000

10 for 10: Alumni who impress Amanda J. McManus Fri, 09/26/2025 - 15:25 Malinda Miller

CMDI counts alumni from disciplines like journalism, communication and advertising as part of its history, meaning its impact goes back more than a century. But even in just the 10 years since its official founding, the college has produced some incredible graduates and amazing stories. Here are some of our favorites.

Drake Brown (StratComm’18)
Manager, Digital and Social Media, KPMG US, Philadelphia

Brown tells KPMG’s story through social and digital media channels. Experiences from classes and an Ogilvy & Mather internship helped him land an agency job after graduation.

“My capstone class was a value-add to my career. At my first agency job, I was thrown into multiple new business pitches, and it didn’t feel like it was my first time interfacing and presenting to an external client.”

Troy Fairbanks (CritMedia’18)
Owner of both Fairbanks Films and Rise Aerials, Denver

When Fairbanks entered college he was already freelancing, and he now owns and operates two companies. Fairbanks Films specializes in video production for sports, corporate work, documentaries, livestreams, and event coverage; Rise Aerials focuses on high-end aerial cinematography.

“All the different projects for class were exciting, and it felt so fun and fluid. Many were projects I wouldn't normally create on my own, so it was a really good exercise to broaden my skills. When I graduated, I had 10 to 15 videos for my portfolio.”

Jasi Les (Comm’18)
Enterprise Account Director, LinkedIn, San Francisco

After nearly a decade in tech—from startups to global brands— Les manages more than $4 million in business for LinkedIn across 30 strategic enterprise accounts. She works with executives to understand their challenges and gaps, then builds business cases of how LinkedIn products can help.

“My degree has made me a multidimensional communicator. I can speak very technically with a development team, then meet with a Fortune 500 executive and translate that message.”

Sophie Burgess (EnvDes’19)
Senior Landscape Architect, SLR Consulting, Edinburgh, Scotland

Since joining SLR in May, Burgess has worked on the best way to implement onshore substations for offshore wind farms across the United Kingdom while doing justice to the historical and local character of the areas where those projects are installed.

“It goes back to everything I learned in ENVD and at college—making sure your designs and the way you implement things are thoughtful and intentional, and trying your best to problem solve with the codes you're given.”

Katy Fetters Gaastra (MMediaSt’19)
Founder, Cerebral Palsy Strong, Portland, Oregon

Gaastra runs a nonprofit for adults with disabilities that includes an online platform based on sharing stories and connection, and a growing number of in-person events.

“I came to �� with a very specific goal—to understand how to become a better community organizer, storyteller and leader. The master’s in media and public engagement allowed me to explore how to do that with more intention, and how to build a narrative around a social justice movement to increase disability representation in a positive way.”

Cole Pates (CritMedia’19)
Global Video Director, The North Face, Denver

Pates’ day-to-day involves managing production for seasonal campaigns within the company. It’s a job that often requires on-the-spot problem-solving as the team tackles outdoor shoots under changing conditions.

“When I was in college, I assumed as long as I had a camera and something to go take a picture or video of, I was fine. But as you gain experience, and the productions get larger, you realize there’s a time and a place for what you learned in class. You start to understand roles and responsibilities, and how those factor in to accomplish the goal.”

Cheyenne Smith (StratComm’20)
Creative Producer, Chey Smith Media LLC, Boulder

Smith manages campaigns, produces commercials and creates social media content for outdoor brands—such as REI, Osprey and Teva—as a freelancer. She has also stayed connected with Pathways to Excellence, CMDI’s summer intensive program that prepares students for college.

“I love watching Pathways students find what they are passionate about, because that’s what helped light me up when I was in the program.”

Vinay Simlot (Jour, AeroEngr’21)
Washington Correspondent, Nexstar TV, Washington, D.C.

Following three years at a local station in Tennessee, Simlot now covers national politics and produces stories for local stations. Once in a while, he gets to use his aerospace engineering background for stories on space.

“I was ready to jump into local news because of NewsTeam. We learned how to work on the fly. We learned how to put stuff together on deadline. We learned to be flexible. And we learned every job in the newsroom—to report, anchor, produce, everything.”

Janghee Cho (PhD Info’23)
Assistant Professor, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore

Cho researches and teaches in the areas of human-computer interaction and social computing with a focus on the role of future technologies in our everyday lives—research he began as a Meta fellow. He also directs the Joyful Experience in Design and Interaction Lab.

“The information science department studies emerging technology from a sociocultural—not just a technical—perspective. It opened my eyes to understanding humans in a different way to influence design—to think more critically about the design.”

Bianca Zamora Perez (Comm, MediaSt’24)
PhD student, University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication, Philadelphia

Perez is continuing research she started at CMDI. Through the lens of copyright and labor, she studies authorship in relation to how an individual’s images and text—especially wage workers with marginalized identities—are training generative A.I. models without compensation.

“My time in CMDI gave me the books, theories and knowledge I need to perform academically. The college also introduced me to professors who saw me as both a student and a person they cared about. They supported me throughout the journey of finding my voice and using it.”

Malinda Miller graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences with a degree in English in 1992 and Master's in Journalism in 1998.

CMDI boasts more than a century of history—meaning alumni in journalism, advertising and communication have gone on to truly incredible careers. But even just looking at graduates from the 10 years the college has existed showcases some amazing stories. Here are some of our favorites.

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In its milestone year, CMDI welcomes more than a dozen new faculty

Joe Arney — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 20:40:01 +0000

In its milestone year, CMDI welcomes more than a dozen new faculty Joe Arney Fri, 08/15/2025 - 14:40

Joe Arney

Kevin Hoth is among the new faculty at CMDI this fall, though he's been lecturing at the university since 2011. ‘It feels like a perfect home for me; I’m very grateful to be with such a forward-thinking department,’ he says. Photo by Hannah Howell.

Kevin Hoth probably knows what it’s like for a longtime AAA pitcher to at last get the call to join the big leagues.

Hoth has been teaching at �� Boulder since 2011—originally as part of the ATLAS Institute—but this fall, he joins the critical media practices department at the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information as an assistant teaching professor.

“I’m so excited to have this department as my home on a more permanent basis,” said Hoth, previously a lecturer in critical media practices. “It feels like a perfect home for me; I’m very grateful to be with such a forward-thinking department.”

Hoth is one of 14 new professors to join CMDI this fall, bringing experience in artificial intelligence, surveillance studies, technology, journalism and more to the college. Coincidentally, the college is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its founding this year.

Lori Bergen, founding dean of CMDI, said while the quantity of new faculty is impressive, it’s the quality that helps this group stand out.

“I am so impressed with the credentials our new faculty are bringing to the college,” Bergen said. “Whether it’s their published work, varied research interests or boundless enthusiasm for teaching young people and preparing them for professional and person success after college, I know we have an impressive group that will create a lasting impact on the college and university.”

The full lineup of new faculty:

Ian J. Alexander, assistant professor, media studies. He researches the implementation and effects of media technologies in U.S. prisons.
Ashley Carter, assistant teaching professor, journalism. Carter earned her PhD in journalism from the college in the spring. As a a student, she took first place in a best paper competition at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. She has written for The Denver Post, 303 Magazine and elsewhere.
Yiran Duan, teaching professor, information science. Duan studies how different types of users shape the flow of information using machine learning models, inferential statistics and data visualizations.
Cheri Felix, assistant teaching professor, advertising, public relations and design. Felix has been a lecturer at the college since 2022. She brings varied experiences to CMDI, including work as a writer, founder and program manager.
Kevin Hoth, assistant teaching professor, critical media practices. Hoth is a fine art photographer who has won multiple grants for his work.
Erica Hunzinger, assistant teaching professor, journalism. Hunzinger has been a lecturer at the college since 2022. Her journalism experience includes work for The Associated Press, The Denver Post and elsewhere.
Seonah Kim, assistant teaching professor, media studies. She studies global discourses around racial and gender identity in media that are shaped by structural inequality.
Julia Proft, teaching professor, information science. Proft brings experience in software engineering in educational technology to the college.
Mehak Sawhney, assistant professor, media studies. Her research interests include sound and media studies, surveillance studies, and environmental humanities.
Victoria Pihl Sørensen, assistant teaching professor, media studies. Sørensen conducts research at the intersection of media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and the history and philosophy of science and technology.
Ilana Trumble, teaching professor, information science. Trumble also is returning to Boulder, having earned her bachelor’s degree here in 2014. She is an expert in statistics and data science.
Hong Tien Vu, associate professor, journalism. Vu brings a decade of experience in journalism from living in Vietnam, including a stint with The Associated Press, to the classroom. He also is director of the college’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
Cody Walizer, assistant teaching professor, communication. Walizer has been teaching game studies, sports communication and related topics at CMDI since 2022. He specializes in debate and game studies.
Jonathan Zong, assistant professor, information science. Zong joins CMDI from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. He also studied at Princeton University and was a visiting student at the University of Oxford.

Alexander said he’s excited to join the college as part of such a large group of newcomers.

“It almost feels like a cohort, which is really exciting,” he said. “And at the same time, there are folks in the media studies department who have been around awhile, so it feels like I get to join a new group, and also a good, established one.”

Alexander brings particularly interesting research to CMDI. His work studies the introduction of media technologies—radio, telephone, tablets—into the U.S. carceral system. Through his research, he’s interviewed incarcerated people over phone and video call to better understand how technology advances have been used to isolate politically active people trying to create community within—or among—prisons, or to broadcast to communities in the event of an escape.

The newest tool he’s interested in are tablets, PDFs and video visit systems, which are starting to replace letters from home and legal communications.

“I look at these technologies as tools of struggle, oppression, isolation and manipulation—but also as tools of connection,” he said. “So, for instance, the way people inside are using them to make radio shows or podcasts, produce literature, or build solidarity and community and raise political consciousness.”

It’s work that is historical in its approach, but is worth studying in the current moment—both as the nation dramatically increases investment in policing and incarceration, and with generative artificial intelligence strongly reshaping how we communicate.

“It feels like I get to join a new group, and also a good, established one.”

Ian J. Alexander, assistant professor, media studies

“Like many people who study systems of structural oppression, I wish it were less relevant,” Alexander said. “But beyond just the massive expansion of ICE, and the so-called Alligator Alcatraz, there’s a larger question around what social and political function prisons serve—and what the state is saying about itself through its carceral system.”

Proft, who was a lecturer in the information science department in the spring, said she’s excited to bring her industry experience to the classroom, especially since she worked in educational technology.

“I enjoyed that work, but the impact I was able to have was pretty far removed from the actual students,” she said. “I really value having that smaller, but closer, connection to the students.”

Information science, she said, is a comfortable fit for its attention to creating human impact. That’s something she felt she missed while studying computer science.

“I think information science is one of those things where you ask people what it is, and you get tons of different answers,” she said. “But I think having that diversity—whether it’s technical, or business, or design applications—is really important, because that brings back the more human aspects of technology. So we get away from talking about computing as a topic divorced from anything else in the world.”

She said A.I. and large language models are a topic she’s excited to explore with her students, some of whom consider the advent of LLMs as an invitation to not have to learn to code anymore. Crucially, students must learn to use these tools—but they must be taught that they are tools, not shortcuts.

“When you learn to code, you’re developing a problem-oriented mindset, and learning how to approach and solve those problems,” Proft said. “If they’re leaning on LLMs to generate code, they don’t think about what the code is actually doing, which means when something goes wrong, they can’t address it.”

Hoth, as a fine art photographer, has given plenty of consideration to A.I.’s disruptive impact on the creation of images.

“Especially in media production, A.I. is a huge concern,” he said. “But I don’t put my head in the sand and say, ‘You can’t use any of this, we’re not going to talk about it.’ We have to talk about it. We have to integrate it into our teaching and our practices. But I have to show them where the line is.”

Hoth mentioned a conversation with a past student, who used A.I. to touch up nighttime photos in a project he did that took him around the state.

“I liked that he wasn’t afraid to share that with me,” Hoth said. “In this case, these were meant to be creative pictures—he’s not a documentary photographer—and so we discussed, you couldn’t put this in the Denver Post or New York Times, but with limited usage on a creative project, this kind of tool is OK.”

A major lesson in his classes, outside of technology, is that the right kind of failure is required for growth. He often shares failures from his own career to show how getting things wrong can be helpful.

“The learning environment should be a place of safety, in terms of play and also of learning how to fail well,” he said. “If you put forth your best effort, you’re trying something new and you fail, that’s commendable. That’s how you get to great things.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

The college is welcoming experts in artificial intelligence, surveillance studies, technology, journalism and more this fall.

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