{"id":75030,"date":"2013-04-03T08:55:58","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T12:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=75030"},"modified":"2015-12-14T10:18:21","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T15:18:21","slug":"digital-media-specialists-harovas-and-olschan-join-the-uconn-faculty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/04\/digital-media-specialists-harovas-and-olschan-join-the-uconn-faculty\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Media Specialists Harovas and Olschan Join the UConn Faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Perry<\/a>
Perry Harovas, left, associate professor-in-residence, and Samantha Olschan, assistant professor-in-residence, new faculty members in the Digital Media & Design Department. (Sean Flynn\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The basement of the Bishop Center might not be the likeliest venue for regular displays of magic, but that\u2019s what seems to happen when new associate professors-in-residence Perry Harovas and Samantha Olschan work together.<\/p>\n

On computer screens, pictures dissolve and turn into flocks of birds. On an interior wall, an animated projection flips through facts about heart health while students watch. And Olschan and Harovas, each with a lengthy private sector resume in their respective fields, bring a strong focus on collaboration to the newly established Department of Digital Media and Design.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like creative ping-pong,\u201d Olschan says. \u201cWe bounce ideas off each other all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking over his shoulder as he fine tunes another animation project, Harovas chimes in: \u201cSome people want to stay isolated in their own little area, and we really don\u2019t work that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harovas and Olschan arrived on campus in the fall just as the new department was launching under the direction of Professor Tim Hunter. With six faculty members and 135 students so far, the department is helping position UConn at the forefront of digital media and design, a field that\u2019s as diverse as it is dynamic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing I can say about the industry for sure is that it will be different tomorrow from what it is today,\u201d says Harovas, whose experience before coming to UConn included ownership of two visual effects companies and serving as an instructor at New York University.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason the field is changing so rapidly is because there are so many potential applications for the work done by digital media professionals, says Olschan, who did everything from working as a broadcast designer at Fox News to teaching classes at Wesleyan University before arriving at UConn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m teaching students from engineering, art students, students from business, from graphic design,\u201d she says. \u201cFor me, imagination is the building block regardless of what field you\u2019re in, and a lot of what we do is develop those conversations across the disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of those conversations include evangelizing for the benefits of digital media in disciplines where people might not suspect their work would make an ideal fit with the field.<\/p>\n

As an example, Harovas points to the project he\u2019s guiding a student on, in which animations of cell structures are being produced for a class taught by Mary Bruno, assistant professor-in-residence of molecular and cell biology.<\/p>\n

\u201cBiochemistry students who take that class, when they find out a student worked to make that animation, can really start to see some of the possibilities in applying our work to different areas,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

That kind of work is precisely what Hunter calls the \u201cfour-legged table\u201d model of digital media and design: \u201dThe four components are artistic creativity, business, STEM \u2013 or science, technology, engineering, and math, and the digital humanities\/social sciences. No barriers, no boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with students in other disciplines to think in new ways has actually been one of the most invigorating aspects of her work so far, Olschan has found.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really happy with the work from my engineers and my computer scientists,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re really delivering when it comes to thinking creatively about applying digital media to their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The transdisciplinary work will ramp up this fall, when UConn starts offering two new degrees in digital media and design: students at Storrs and Stamford will be able to obtain either a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and there are plans to develop master\u2019s degrees as well as four-course post-baccalaureate certificates.<\/p>\n

The University community can also get a look at some cutting-edge work in the field on Thursday, April 4, at a daylong symposium on digital media and design in the Rome Commons Ballroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perry Harovas and Samantha Olschan bring extensive private sector experience to UConn’s new and rapidly growing Department of Digital Media and Design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":75138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,1914],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[131],"class_list":["post-75030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-sfa"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 02:00:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75030"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107098,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75030\/revisions\/107098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/75138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75030"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=75030"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=75030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}