College’s first Career Day goes virtual, with creatives from every PCA&D BFA major

Industries representing careers that lead from every PCA&D major will be present April 14 when the College hosts its first Career Day.

In addition, artists and creatives from a wide variety of fields — from VFX artists and game developers to comic book writers, illustrators, graphic designers, curators, gallery directors, filmmakers, public programming, graduate studies, and more — have signed on to share their career experiences.

Career Day already was in the works when local, state, and federal governments ordered COVID-19 shutdowns, so event organizers such as Student Life, administration, and PCA&D Advisor for Career Success Dr. Chris Wagenheim moved the entire undertaking online.

“I not only wanted to give our students an opportunity to develop their careers as working artists, I wanted to give them something normal to grab on to,” Wagenheim says. “I think a career fair is beautifully normal in the middle of everything that is going on.”

The six-hour event is designed to allow students to maximize the number of employer presentations they can attend via the online meeting platform Zoom; to participate in Q&A sessions; and to “stop by” a series of brief speaker sessions throughout the day.

“I tried to keep Career Day as close to the original idea of a combination career fair and professional seminar as I could, and I think it worked,” Wagenheim says, “we just have a few more webcams.”

A virtual will be held from 1:45-3 pm. A Juno Award-winner for her design work with band Arcade Fire, Maurice also created album artwork, music videos, and live experimental content for the band. She has lectured at Berklee College of Music and taught in the IDFA Film Academy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Other Career Day speakers in the lineup include:

• Michelle Leman, a Seattle-based freelance multimedia artist and a member of the band Brites.
• Leon Nowlin Jr., whose most recent projects include Visual Effects on many of the Avengersfilms, the film 90 Minutes in Heaven in 2015, David Guetta’s music video Just One Last Time in 2011, and a branded project with Cox Communications in 2011.
• Jason Piperberg, an illustrator, comic artist, and storyteller who has worked on “Raising Dion,” covers for Archie Comics’ Sonic and Mega Man titles, the Champions of Hara comics and board game, and his creator-owned sci-fi adventure comic Spaceman and Bloater.
• Alexandra Schaufele, Assistant Curator of Education, Public Programs at the University of Notre Dame Snite Museum of Art in Indiana.
• Erin Truesdell, a game developer, musician, and doctoral student in Digital Media at Georgia Tech.
• James Ward, Senior Animator at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Some of his most recent projects include Film – Connected in 2020, Love, Death, and Robots: Lucky 13 in 2019, and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse in 2018.