May 21, 2015

Please join us in congratulating five outstanding Westphal professors who were recently granted tenure and promotion. Genevieve Dion, Fashion Design and Director of the Shima Seiki Haute Technology Laboratory; Michael Glaser, Product Design Program Director; Dave Mauriello, Animation & Visual Effects; and Alphonso McClendon, Fashion Design, were all promoted to Associate Professor. Dr. Michael Wagner, Digital Media, was promoted to Full Professor and his appointment as Department Head is no longer on an interim basis. Their tenure applications documented impressive accomplishments in research, scholarship, teaching and service; they each in their own way add something very special to the University.

Professor Dion has contributed robust research to the fields of smart textiles, wearable technologies and 3D knitting, bringing together science and design by building interdisciplinary collaborations with colleagues from Drexel’s Colleges of Engineering, Nursing and Health Professions, Medicine, Computing and Informatics, and the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute. Professor Glaser was the inaugural Program Director of Product Design and has worked expertly to create and bring to life this interdisciplinary design program, which has received a great deal of media attention for its students’ award-winning design solutions. Dr. Michael Wagner previously served as Program Director of our nationally-ranking digital media programs, and then as the inaugural Department Head of the Digital Media Department. Under Michael’s leadership we’ve added excellent new faculty, grown enrollment, greatly increased the Department’s research productivity and we are now launching this College’s first PhD program. Dr. Wagner has made internationally recognized research contributions in gamification, developing innovative uses of interactive media as valuable educational tools.

Professor McClendon’s extensive experience in design, production, technology and the business of fashion have greatly served our Fashion Design Program and his research on the intersection of fashion, jazz, race, and gender studies, the subject of his recently published book, has made a meaningful contribution to this field. Professor Mauriello’s research innovatively merges animation with other fields, including a virtual heart created in collaboration with colleagues from Drexel’s College of Medicine. Dave previously served as Director of the undergraduate Digital Media Program.