September 20, 2009

We congratulate four members of our faculty who were granted tenure and we welcome four new professors to the College. Mathieu Gendreau joins the Music Industry program. Mathieu is a recording artist, producer and engineer with his own record label that has distributed in the U.S. and internationally. Mathieu has produced and engineered for labels such as EMI, Mute, Virgin, Saville Row, Sony, SM Entertainment, and Tommy Boy. As a recording artist, Mathieu is half of the indie-electronic duo Plastic Operator.

Dave Mauriello joins Digital Media. Dave began his artistic career as a traditional painter and illustrator before transitioning to digital work. He started Magic Animation in 1998 to provide custom 3D modeling and animation services to producers of medical, educational, advertising and entertainment productions. His unique creative approaches have earned him numerous Telly and Summit International awards for animation.

Alphonso McClendon joins Fashion Design. Most recently, McClendon was Nautica's Director of Product Design for Pants, Denim, Swimwear, Hats and Bags. He has worked extensively in China, Taiwan, Japan, England, Italy, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines on design and manufacturing. McClendon was the driving force behind the success of Nautica's men's swimwear for the past decade. His swimwear designs have appeared in Men's Vogue, Details, GQ, Outside and DNR, and were featured on the Today Show and The Sopranos. He designed athletic swimwear for Nautica-sponsored Professional Volleyball Players on the AVP tour, working with fabrics ranging from recycled polyester to bamboo blends.

Brian Moore joins the Entertainment and Arts Management program. In New York, Brian worked for Boneau/Bryan-Brown, the Broadway publicity firm, where he handled over a dozen Broadway and Off-Broadway productions including Disney's Beauty and the Beast, The Who's Tommy, and Angels In America. In Los Angeles, he ran his own boutique PR firm. He has been Director of Development for the Wilma Theater, Program Associate for the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative and Program Manager for the Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, both programs of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Most recently, Brian was the Managing Director of The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival.

James Undercofler joins our graduate program in Arts Administration. Until this past January, Jim was President and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Prior to joining The Philadelphia Orchestra, Jim served as Dean and Professor of Music Education at the Eastman School of Music.

Jen Blazina, Art & Art History, has been granted tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Since 1997, Jen has been featured in 27 solo exhibitions and 64 group exhibitions. Her large scale exhibit, Recollection, has been shown in Philadelphia, Miami and Chicago. She has exhibited in solo exhibitions in Belgium, Germany, New York, New Mexico and Florida. Jen's recent group shows include Multiplicity, an exhibit at the American University Museum in Washington, D.C., Time Capsules at Gallery Imperato in Baltimore, and Historia, Jen Blazina and Michael Markwick in Dordrecht, Netherlands. Jen was a resident artist at the Frans Masereel Centrium in Belgium; Scuola di Grafica in Venice, Italy; the Kala Institute of Art and the Toos Neger Studio in the Netherlands. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded Jen an artist residency at the Woman's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. The Cranbook Art Museum in Bloomfield, Michigan, the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California and The Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio are institutions that house Jen's work in permanent collection.

Jim Klein received tenure and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in the Music Industry program. Jim's 30-year career in the music industry included a lengthy stint as Chief Engineer at Platinum Island recording studios in Manhattan. He has recorded hundreds of projects including albums, film and television scores. He has worked on projects for Michael Jackson, Rick Derringer, Bernard Edwards (Chic, Power Station, Madonna), and Miramax Films. As a songwriter, Jim was signed with Famous Music and has had over two dozen major label cuts, with several reaching the Billboard Hot 100 Singles' charts. Jim has written hundreds of commercial jingles and underscores for clients Coca Cola, AT&T, MCI, Bennigan's, Midas, Pillsbury, Bacardi, Canon, Glad, Secret, and Bounty. His underscoring has been featured on such television shows as the NBC Olympics coverage in Beijing, Sydney, and Lake Placid, Oprah, The Today Show, VH-1's Behind the Music and Martha Stewart Living. Nominated seven times for Emmy Awards, Jim won in 2003 and 2005 for his work on ABC's All My Children and continues to be a featured composer for the show. He owns J2R Music, a music publishing company that supplies music for the film and television industries. Jim is Program Director for the Music Industry program.

Associate Professor Andrea Modica of our Photography Program has been granted tenure. Andrea's photographs have appeared in the pages of such preeminent publications as The New Yorker, Newsweek, Life Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Village Voice and Esquire. The winner of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Grant, Professor Modica's 1998 publication, Treadwell, is an acclaimed photographic study, which includes a forward written by Pulitzer Prize winner E. Annie Proulx. Other works by Professor Modica are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery and the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, France.

Mike Moss is Program Director for our Music Program and is conductor of the Concert Band and Pep Band. Mike has been promoted to Associate Professor and granted tenure. Before coming to Drexel, he was Music Department Chair and Director of Bands at Southern Connecticut State University and he also has directed the athletic band at Quinnipiac University. Professor Moss is highly regarded in music circles for his advocacy of music by African-American composers. He conducts on the Keystone Winds' CD Out of the Depths devoted to works by black composers. His band orchestration of Gabriel Fauré's Chant Funéraire was recorded by the University of North Texas on a 2006 GIA release and has been played by elite groups across the country.

Genevieve Dion, Fashion Design Program Director, has been named an Assistant Professor. Genevieve is an award winning designer and artist whose work has been sold in Bergdorf Goodman, Maxfield and Barneys, and is in the permanent collection of The Victoria and Albert Museum.