January 23, 2023 | Kimberly Phillips

UConn’s first integrative studies student bridges passion for art, engineering in research and life

Arpita Kurdekar’s story doesn’t start at the point she came to the United States, or when she got her dream job as an engineer, or when she pivoted to graduate studies at UConn. It doesn’t even begin when, as a young woman just starting out, a tree limb fell on her, rendering Kurdekar paralyzed from the chest down.

Her story begins long before all of that, when she was a young girl in India, and first picked up a paintbrush. It was a childhood hobby stoked by two artist parents and encouraged by accolades and a few awards for her work.

Growing up, Kurdekar was caught between an affinity for art and a passion for math and science, the latter winning out educationally and professionally when she pushed painting aside and sought to design bridges as masterful as her favorite, the Brooklyn Bridge.

Never did she think the bridge that would become her greatest accomplishment to date would be the one that marries engineering and art, bringing travelers to a place that merges the two – if only virtually.

‘My life changed in just a moment’

Kurdekar earned a master’s degree in engineering from the University at Buffalo in 2015 after completing her undergraduate degree in India and working a few years at a structural engineering firm there. She came to the U.S. for the opportunity of advanced education and the hope for a professional license not long thereafter.

While at Buffalo, an internship at the New Hampshire Department of Transportation provided a conduit to a full-time position in the Granite State at GM2 Associates, where she focused on structural design calculations for projects in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

She says she enjoyed the work, suiting up in a safety vest and headlamp out in the field, ascending into the underbelly of structures for visual inspections, and sometimes walking through construction sites as workers laid the steel girders that help give a bridge its strength.

“One day, about seven months after I started at GM2, I went home after work and planned to go to the gym. As I walked down the driveway, a neighbor’s tree fell on me and immediately I was paralyzed with a spinal cord injury,” she says. “My life changed in just a moment.”

Kurdekar says she lay on the ground calling for help for an hour because she was in a location that neighbors couldn’t readily see. Eventually her roommate came home, and Kurdekar says she remembers being found. She then lost consciousness.

Girish and Vandana Kurdekar traveled from India as quickly as possible to sit by their daughter’s bedside, and today provide her around-the-clock care. Her first memory after the accident was waking to them in the hospital.

“It was a very difficult time,” Kurdekar says of those early days of recovery. “I was on a ventilator, so it has been a long recovery journey. I had to learn to breathe on my own again, how to talk, how to eat, and how to move what parts of my body I could. It has been a very, very long and difficult six years.”

Those early days of rehab at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Boston were centered on regaining the most basic of life skills. Once Kurdekar moved to Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire, a therapist suggested she tap not just into the muscle memory of the art from her youth but also the peace it gave her.

At first, Kurdekar says the only movement she had was shrugging her shoulders. Then, with the aid of a splint, she learned to hold a paintbrush. Eventually, she wrote her name, and later she painted flowers.

“I remember those sunflowers,” she says with a giggle. “They didn’t look like sunflowers – only my therapist and I knew they were sunflowers. Still, art has been an outlet of joy for me to fight depression and feel happy again. It gives me a lot of rest and peace.”

As she awakened to the value of art in her life, Kurdekar returned to work at GM2 for a few months before assessing her professional future and recognizing academia was the place she wanted to be.

GM2 President and CEO Manish K. Gupta ’98 MS, ’01 Ph.D. had become a mentor to Kurdekar and spoke fondly of his time at UConn. At his urging, she applied.

Teaching with VR Technology

Accepted into the School of Engineering Ph.D. program in 2018 and poised to study civil engineering, Kurdekar realized the passion she’d had for engineering had waned, though it wasn’t extinguished. She thought there might be a way to bring art and engineering together to complement each other.

Kurdekar says she shared with faculty in the schools of Education, Engineering, and Fine Arts her idea to create virtual reality technology to help students learn engineering principles that can be difficult to understand via a two-dimensional description in a textbook or on a screen – think thermodynamics, angular momentum, and gyroscopes.

It’s technology that visual artists, too, could use to practice their skills or plan for a piece that might be too large or cost prohibitive to build as a prototype.

“I’m aiming to teach concepts related to rigid body dynamics and specific art movements and art-making techniques through the overarching theme of kinetic sculptures,” she says. “I wish to present the learning experience in a more interesting and playful manner, in which the students can engage in creative thinking and problem solving by applying learning from both fields. That’s the kind of education we need to give students to prepare them to become innovative thinkers.”

She assembled a team of advisors from each of the three schools and became UConn’s first Integrative Studies Ph.D. candidate. It’s a program that allows students to combine several disciplines into one study track that doesn’t fit neatly into an existing department. Kurdekar hopes to finish her degree in 2024.

She has a fellowship from the Krenicki Arts and Engineering Institute, for which she’s been a teaching assistant in courses such as Entrepreneurship & Innovation in Industrial Design, Packaging Design, and Human Factors in Design. Kurdekar also has received support from the Dr. Radenka Maric Fellowship Fund for Engineering.

“There are a lot of parallels between my research and the art-making process,” she says. “In both, I focus my energy on solving creative challenges, whether on canvas or in a 3D virtual space. I want the viewer to be moved by the visuals and feel the same sense of engagement and enjoyment as I had during the making of it.”

In the beginning, though, Kurdekar was not a computer programmer. She says she’d picked up only bits of coding experience during school and needed to lay that foundation before building up.

Advisor Kenneth Thompson, an assistant professor in-residence in UConn’s Digital Media & Design department, taught Kurdekar’s first class, Introduction to Game Scripting.

“It takes grit to go from nothing to where Arpita is now,” Thompson says. “Since she came at it with a background in engineering, she already had the foundational logic and thought process that allowed her to excel in class. She knew where she wanted to go, and that made it easy to point her toward the material she needed to learn.”

Kurdekar found supplemental instruction on YouTube, and, coupled with DMD classes, gained proficiency in the language C#, or C Sharp.

Making Her Mark in a Burgeoning Field

“Game development is a ubiquitous thing that we see everywhere,” Thompson says. “Your mailer that you get from the grocery store asks you to go on a quest for a 75-cent-per-pound ham to get experience points on your badge when you scan your card. Gaming is applied in different ways. Arpita really made the case that what she’s doing with VR is valuable from an educational research perspective and adds to the numerous projects being done across campus and disciplines.”

Thompson says that while people might associate VR mostly with gaming or entertainment, the technology merely helps users understand something at scale: “It’s like the first time you step out of a car or an airport in a big city and you have that feeling of looking up. It’s kind of overwhelming to feel that sense of height. VR provides that kind of experience and makes it possible to communicate or teach it.”

He says that a giant swinging pendulum, for instance, might be too dangerous, too difficult, or too expensive to create or too limited to have more than one per class. Kurdekar’s VR technology will allow students to learn concepts related to that pendulum because it will be right in front of each of them.

“People who are working on VR technology now, like Arpita, they’re the ones who are going to make marks and be the forebearers of how we have new experiences and interact with things,” he says.

School of Engineering Associate Dean Daniel Burkey, another of Kurdekar’s advisors, says some UConn faculty members already have begun to use VR technology for straightforward purposes, like looking at landscapes, viewing topographical maps, or manipulating objects.

Kurdekar’s work differs in that it’s more immersive.

Burkey says what’s being used now is in addition to classroom lessons, whereas Kurdekar’s technology will bring the educational space into the virtual world.

“That’s the defining feature and that’s something that will be really impactful moving forward,” he says. “The other interesting thing about Arpita’s work is that it is applicable to a lot of different engineering fields. Engineering has a strong psychometric component; it’s very hands on. Sometimes it’s difficult to give students an authentic hands-on experience. Virtual reality allows you to do that in a much more authentic way than simply interacting with something on a screen, or reading a case study, or doing it in pen and paper.”

Thompson adds that the pandemic accelerated the mainstream’s adoption of VR technology, especially since the cost of the requisite hardware is decreasing.

Burkey says, “Previous generations of the hardware have been large. They’ve been bulky. They’ve been attached to a computer with a lot of wires. There’s lag time that can be disorienting for people. The increases in computing power, the shrinking of technology, the reductions in cost are all making it a lot more accessible.”

Accessibility for those with limited mobility also has been central to Kurdekar’s research, especially since she’s just beginning to move her fingers at the first knuckle thanks to surgeries in 2021 and 2022.

“For five years I couldn’t move a finger, and now I can,” she says. “This is very new research, and Dr. Justin Brown, my doctor, at the Paralysis Center at Spaulding, is one of only a few doing it. Who knew this could happen for me, but it did. People are doing research and breakthroughs are happening every day. These unbelievable changes in my life have made me look at the future in a very positive way.”

Immersed in Art, Memorizing Nature

At home, Kurdekar paints as often as possible, trying to fill most of her free time with it and having done hundreds of pieces, many of which she has posted on Instagram and her website. Lately, she’s tried painting on wood and even using clay to create pottery.

“

I started off with representational style paintings, trying to make things look real, very life-like,” she explains. “But slowly, I realized my inner voice was missing in the art I was creating. So, I started laying fragments of my memories and experiences with people, places, and things on my canvases. My work started becoming more abstract and meaningful as I traced those memories with the use of expressive brushstrokes and vibrant colors.”

Using the beauty of New England as a muse, she adds, “It’s hard not to have imprints of the sunsets, the sky mixing with the water, or even the energetic shifting movements of the birds foraging the farms and the feeders in your mind and heart.”

In 2019, Kurdekar’s work went on display for the first time at the Mansfield Community Center. Since then, she’s exhibited there and at various galleries, including Arts Center East in Vernon, and has won a few awards in area juried art shows.

She continues to find inspiration in nature. Last summer, she and her parents visited Maine and ascended Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park via wheelchair ramps that stretched to the top. She saw views of the ocean and islands below, memorizing the shapes and colors of the scenery.

“I was a totally different person before the accident,” she says. “I was active. I would dance, I would hike, I would drive to different places. I lost a lot. But this journey has made me a different person. It’s opened my eyes to see what’s important in life. I realized who my true friends are and what really matters. I would never have gone on for my Ph.D. and do the research I’m doing if this hadn’t happened. It gave me a new direction and I totally enjoy what I do now.”

The biggest obstacle at this juncture is her and parents’ immigration status. None of them have U.S. citizenship, keeping Kurdekar from obtaining certain home-care services and her parents’ the ability to apply for driver’s licenses, work here, and get medical insurance.

U.S. Rep. Ann M. Kuster, D-N.H., introduced legislation in 2021 to relieve some of that strain and grant the family of three lawful permanent resident status. That bill, HR680, passed the House in June, the Senate on Dec. 21, and received President Joe Biden’s signature on Jan. 5.

“My parents had tourist visas and every six months they had to renew them in order to stay here legally to care for me. There was always uncertainty they wouldn’t get approved and that was a very big worry for me,” Kurdekar, who now will have a green card, says.

Going back to India isn’t an option. The infrastructure is not handicapped friendly, which means she wouldn’t have job opportunities let alone be able to obtain medical care that, she says, would be inferior to what she’s receiving here.

“I don’t know if I’d even be able to survive there,” Kurdekar says. “All the skills, all the hard-earned skills I have wouldn’t be utilized. In the U.S., every individual has equal opportunities in spite of their physical abilities. I can do a lot here. I can use my knowledge and skills to contribute to society.”

Despite all of this, she’s carried on.

An engineer friend designed and built an adaptable easel that, with the push of a joystick, can rotate a canvas, lift it, push it left or right, or tilt it to give Kurdekar easier reach. The palate of paint rests on the tray of her motorized wheelchair as she gets lost in the small brushstrokes that give her paintings their texture and movement.

“Life is much better than what it was five years back,” she says. “I want to tell people who are struggling not to be afraid. Take one day at a time. Have small goals and try to achieve them. If you really work hard, there’s always a way out. You can always find a way. If you keep looking, you’ll eventually find an answer.”

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2023/01/laying-a-new-foundation-before-building-up-uconns-first-integrative-studies-student-bridges-passion-for-art-engineering-in-research-and-life/

January 5, 2023 | Jaclyn Severance

‘Creating media that unites, that’s something that I really want to do with my films’

Guerra, with Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, and the production team for Grit & Grace (Contributed Photo)

Today, you can order Alicia Villanueva’s handmade tamales from William Sonoma.

If you’re in the San Francisco area, you can get them delivered locally through her website, and you’ll find her at all the major food festivals and events in the area, with more than a dozen different varieties of her signature dish, all prepared in her 6,000-square-foot kitchen, where she employs 22 people through her family business, Alicia’s Tamales Los Mayas.

Soon, you’ll even be able to enjoy her tamales on Alaska Airlines flights, and possibly even American Airlines flights as well – that deal is still in the works.

But while her business is booming now, that hasn’t always been the case for Villanueva, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico and started making 100 tamales in her home kitchen every night – after cleaning houses during the day and taking care of her three children – and then selling her tamales on the street, sometimes making as little as $20 for an evening of culinary effort.

“As an immigrant myself, I felt very drawn into the story of Alicia – she’s a wonderful and charming person,” says Oscar Guerra, an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and an Associate Professor of Film and Video in the Digital Media and Design (DMD) Department at UConn Stamford. “I think that was very remarkable, to be able to meet people who are really hopeful about what it means to become American.”

Guerra met Villanueva while producing and directing his latest documentary-style film, Grit & Grace, a unique project that premiered on December 13 at the National Archives in Washington D.C., with a mission almost as compelling as the three stories of the American dream – including Villanueva’s – that it shares.

Coffee with the Congressman

Grit & Grace tells the three very different stories of Villanueva; Joseph Graham, Jr. of North Carolina; and Jeremy and Wendy Cook of West Virginia. The film – narrated by the actress Sarah Jessica Parker – is a first-of-its-kind production on behalf of the U.S. House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, chaired by Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes.

Guerra first met Himes at an event for Stamford Hospital in the late summer of 2021. They met again for coffee a month later.

“He started telling me about this idea,” Guerra recalls. “He wanted, for the first time, for a U.S. Congressional committee to produce a film, not just a report. Because that’s normally what all committees do at the end of their term, they produce a report. But he thought it would be more impactful if we were able to come up with something, that it could be more compelling than just writing a report. And I thought that was really interesting.”

The Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth was convened by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to develop solutions to what it calls “the key economic issue of our time: the yawning prosperity gap between wealthy Americans and everyone else.”

The committee was tasked with developing recommendations for addressing economic disparity in the country, but also intended to “Show America to Itself,” working in a nonpartisan manner to document the hopes, concerns, and aspirations of Americans regardless of differences or the issues that divide them.

“He told me that he wanted to tell stories about the American people, what it means to be American, what it means to achieve your American dream,” says Guerra, “and I said, ‘I think that’s wonderful.’”

After a lengthy process of interviewing people to potentially feature in the film, the committee staff settled on the three stories, and Guerra went to work bringing his signature style of personal connection with real stories to this new venture of docu-style filmmaking.

“Creating media that unites, that’s something that I really want to do with my films,” Guerra says. “I think that media can entertain. Media sometimes educates. Media informs. And lately we’ve seen a lot of media that divides. I think that we’re very polarized. So, I’m trying to get into this wagon of media that unites, and I’m trying to find stories where we can find commonalities among people and reclaim the humanity in each one of us, because that’s how we can actually connect at the end of the day.”

Stories of Resilience and Determination

Guerra and his team traveled the country, conducting three-to-five-day shoots with each of the participants at their homes, businesses, and neighborhoods.

In California, they toured Villanueva’s commercial kitchens, saw the nonprofit organizations that helped her turn her home-based tamale operation into a viable business plan, and saw the home that her family purchased as the business began to succeed.

In North Carolina, they learned from Graham about how the single father of four struggled with the impact of systemic racism in his early education, how family financial struggles initially derailed his dream of completing his college education, and how he eventually went back to school, ultimately earning his master’s degree and starting his own business focused on equity.

In West Virginia, they met the Cooks, who take care of two sons with special needs while running a home-based antique shop. When pandemic restrictions forced them to close their physical location, they were forced to pivot their business to an online model – made all the more challenging by an unreliable internet connection in rural West Virginia.

While it’s impossible, Guerra explains, to boil all Americans down into just three archetypes, the stories chosen for Grit & Grace embody the resilience and determination of the American people.

“When you see the stories of Alicia, Joseph, and Jeremy and Wendy, they come from very different walks of life,” Guerra says. “But the only thing that they all want from our government is for people work together and be there for us. So, at the end of the day, we’re actually not that different. We all go through the same struggles, and if we try to increase our compassion, if we try to raise our level of empathy, we can find that we all go through a lot and that there’s dignity in the struggle.”

Both Director and Professor – and on a Deadline

Guerra – who won an Emmy award in 2021 for a PBS Frontline documentary that followed an immigrant family from Guatemala living in Stamford, the mother’s life-and-death battle against COVID-19 while pregnant with her second child, and the teacher who agreed to care for the newborn infant while the local community rallied to support the family – often spends months or years documenting the stories he features in his films.

For Grit & Grace, he had only about six months.

“It was not until the summer of 2022 that we actually kickstarted this project, so it took a while to get going,” he says. “I wasn’t even sure if it was going to happen or not. It’s unusual to produce something valuable in this short amount of time, but we were working nonstop.”

He was also working on the film at the same time as his newest Frontline documentary, After Zero Tolerance, which also premiered in December.

“Having the right people on your team, it becomes crucial,” Guerra says. “It’s working with the right people at the right time and having the passion to make it happen.”

As with previous projects, Guerra worked as both a director and a professor, looking to UConn students and colleagues to help form that crucial team.

Samantha Olschan, an assistant professor in the DMD program at UConn Stamford, designed the logo for the film and worked with Michael Roca ’25 (SFA), a DMD sophomore studying Motion Design & Animation at UConn Stamford, who joined the project in the fall as a title designer in the post-production phase of the film.

It was Roca’s first time joining a project like this, and he says he learned a lot about working on a team through the process.

“In terms of the team itself, there was a lot of communication going on the whole time,” says Roca, “and that’s pretty major. Every second counts in a project, especially when the deadline is near. Oscar did let me know that the deadline was near, I was like, ok, I’m going to need to commit to this a lot, if I’m going to get this done.”

While DMD senior Christopher Orrico ’23 (SFA), who is studying Film and Video Production at UConn Stamford, had worked on film productions before, he’d never operated at the scale he says was required of him for Grit & Grace. But he didn’t hesitate when Guerra asked him to join the project.

“I jumped at it – I think I texted as soon as he asked me,” Orrico says. “I texted back not 30 seconds later, ‘Yes, I’m down, let’s go. Don’t even care what it takes. What do we gotta do? What am I doing?’”

Orrico worked as a camera operator for the project – invaluable experience, he says, that has jumpstarted his goals to eventually work as a director of photography and cinematographer on films, particularly documentary-style productions.

But it also pushed him outside his comfort zone – and literally out of the Connecticut – as he traveled with Guerra to California, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Washington D.C., accompanying Guerra on his shoots with the film’s participants.

And as he ate tamales with Villanueva – “She did nothing but feed us,” he shares with gratitude – spent time with Graham and his oldest son, and experienced the day-to-day joys and struggles of the Cook family, Orrico’s personal commitment to the project grew.

“At some point during this entire project, I wanted to be even more invested into it, not just from a career standpoint, but from an empathetic standpoint,” he says. “I wanted to do what I could, because this project is important, and I wanted to give everything that I had and more.

“I learned so much throughout this entire thing, and obviously still being a student, I still made mistakes, and with each mistake that I made, I made it a point to make sure I didn’t make it the next time. That is something that I’m forever grateful for, for both Oscar and his projects.”

Grit & Grace will be screened at UConn Stamford in an upcoming event this spring, sponsored by UConn DMD and Dodd Human Rights Impact. Additional screenings and events at Harvard University and New York University in Spring 2023 are currently in planning stages. To learn more about the project and the U.S. House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, follow @GritandGrace on Twitter or visit fairgrowth.house.gov.

Original Article via UConn Today.

January 3, 2023 | Kimberly Phillips

While fans of UConn Athletics fill stadiums to watch tackles, dunks, and dangles, they may not realize part of creating a fevered experience relies on those sidelined with a camera in hand to post instantly on social media and record sensational moments.

It’s a job several dozen Digital Media & Design students have enjoyed over the last 18 months through a partnership with Athletics that aims to give students real-world experience in the sports entertainment industry.

“Being able to have an internship like this is so important, especially as a DMD major, because we’re presented with so much knowledge and training on how to be creative. This is just one way to use those skills,” says Jared Beltz ’23 (SFA). “In my classes, I’ve learned about social media analytics for my concentration, as well as graphic design and motion animation through other classes, and in this job, I’ve been able to implement everything I learned.”

The partnership started in fall 2021 when a DMD Agency class took on Athletics as a client to create the motion graphics for the Wall of Champions in the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center and revive the UConn Students social media channel that had gone quiet during the pandemic, says Heather Elliott-Famularo, head of DMD.

Then, in spring 2022, DMD offered a special topics course to develop projects like motion graphics for the video boards in the athletics facilities, she says. This fall, students created a new design for the UConn Traditions webpage and a fight song video, as Athletics employed more DMD students.

“There are more sports-related jobs out there than you can imagine,” Elliott-Famularo says of the professional industry. “Connecticut is the sports entertainment capital of the world, with WWE, ESPN, and NBC Sports all in the state. We have alumni running the cameras for replays, creating live graphics, and putting together sponsorship packages. Some of them work for individual sports teams and some even develop stadium halftime shows.

“Motion graphics and video content have become a ubiquitous part of the stadium experience,” she adds. “You might not realize it, but if it were missing, you’d notice.”

Experiential Learning Opportunities

About 18 months ago as UConn Vice President for Communications Tysen Kendig started formulating plans for UConn+, a University-centric yet athletics-heavy streaming service set to launch early next year, a recurring question kept coming up: how to create content.

Kendig says he connected with DMD through UConn Provost Anne D’Alleva, who at the time was dean of the School of Fine Arts, and thought there would be much to gain for both Athletics and students, who’d have the experience of documentary film production and motion graphic design.

“Whenever you get a chance to provide education and experiential learning opportunities for students you need to seize that,” he says. “Having faculty expertise to guide them as part of their curriculum is invaluable for us. We can talk with DMD about what our needs are, outline a project scope, and the work comes back in a turn-key fashion. That’s exactly what Athletics needed.”

Beltz, who’s been working in Athletics since before the formalized partnership, says he’s particularly proud of his 2022 men’s and women’s basketball media day photos, starting with the design and fashioning of a paper backdrop against which he placed players to take their picture. It’s a gallery used on social media to portray UConn’s grit, spirit, and dominance.

“One of the most important things I’ve learned is how to take this kind of content and make a story out of it,” he says. “In DMD, we learn how to tell a story through our work. That’s an important part of what we learn in DMD. Using that skill in a job like this is great because it’s using it for real-world applications.”

While UConn+ has been in development, Kendig says DMD students like Beltz have geared their work mostly toward social media, graphics, photography, and some video. Once the streaming service goes live, though, their projects will include more film production.

Jason Reider ’15 (CLAS), Athletics director of creative content, has worked with many of the DMD students over the last three semesters, pairing them with projects that accentuate their strengths or gain them experience in areas of interest.

“Jared came in as a freshman working on graphic design, and one day he was talking to me about some ideas he had for social media and we realized he’s interested in more than just graphic design,” Reider says of Beltz. “He blossomed into more of a social media and content intern for us. So now, he’s doing graphic design, he’s doing photography, he’s running our student social media account, and he helps on game day on some of our team accounts as well. He’s a true testament to the benefits of DMD and Athletics working together.”

For the last decade, Reider says, social media has grown more important, especially for individual teams who use the digital world as a recruiting tool. Having interns to manage those accounts means they can get the same attention as basketball, football, and hockey.

“It’s great to have students learn their way around Athletics because getting a job in this industry is all about connections and getting experience. Being able to say they helped run some of our Athletics social media accounts on game day is going to give them a leg up when they graduate and look for a full-time job in the sports industry or even outside that field,” he says.

‘Big responsibility moment’

The students’ ability to tell players’ stories on and off the field gives Athletics something it was missing before the partnership, Reider notes.

“The talent level of the freshmen is amazing,” he says. “One of our new interns, Emerson Ricciardone, is an extremely talented videographer, photographer, and he also knows graphic design. Even just a few years ago finding students who had these talents was a difficult task and now they come to UConn with portfolios already built up. They’re just tremendously talented.”

Elliott-Famularo says that’s in part because the DMD/Athletics creative partnership has now become a recruiting tool.

Ricciardone ’26 (SFA) says he always wanted to attend UConn and when he learned about the opportunity to work in Athletics, his decision was cinched. In his first 15 weeks, he’s done video, social media, and graphic design work. He’s created content for the jumbotron at men’s hockey games and has contributed content to their accounts during games.

“One of the things we focus on in DMD is how to make your designs effective in solving a problem or presenting a solution through your creative skills. Being able to apply that concept to the sports world is something I’ve always dreamed of doing and now I’m finally learning how to take a professional approach to something I love doing,” he says.

One of the projects he’s most proud of – and was a “big responsibility moment,” he says – was when he was charged with covering the men’s hockey game against Providence. He alone was videoing the game and shouldered the weight of collecting footage of the shootout after the game went into overtime.

“I’m happy I was able to capture the team’s reaction to winning that game and record the actual live game moments, along with getting the fan experience as well. That was a test for me to see how well I could handle a high-stress environment and be trusted to do good work,” he says, adding, “It all goes back to storytelling. You want to make sure, especially when you’re documenting certain events, that you capture all the emotional moments.”

The effort benefits UConn, but there’s an eye to the long term.

“While we already have an incredible number of alumni in the industry, as word gets out that we are intentionally building a sports entertainment path within UConn Digital Media & Design, it will be exciting to see the positive impact the program will have both on the student experience and the industry as a whole,” Elliott-Famularo says. “By providing an experienced talent pipeline, we will support the business demand and Connecticut’s economy.”

 

Original Article via UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/2023/01/creative-partnership-gives-a-win-to-both-dmd-and-athletics/