I AM SAM—a design educator and academic leader at Arizona State University’s Design School. As an architectural, graphic, interactive, and environmental designer, I have worked across design industries and the academic landscape. As a design educator, my primary pedagogical approach has focused on collaborative learning experiences, uniting the theories and practices of multiple design disciplines into cohesive communicable concepts.
My research examines how learning experiences are formed through relationships among people, spaces, technologies, and the social and historical conditions they carry. This work began with a focus on experience equity for online design students and the development of communities that bridge traditional and alternative learning environments, forming the foundation for my doctoral dissertation, s(cr)een, completed in Fall 2025. More recently, this research has expanded through FIELD—Forms of Interactivity and Emergent Learning Dynamics—which asks how changing relationships continually make and remake the conditions for learning. Using mapping and other forms of inquiry, FIELD makes these learning ecologies temporarily visible, creating opportunities to understand what becomes consequential and what new possibilities for learning emerge.
My previous creative research examined context and behavior in developing different educational materials and how these can be applied to varying design deliverables in physical and virtual learning environments. An early iteration of this research, Knowhere: Finding Ways to Teach Wayfinding, has achieved regional recognition from the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers (SEGD) and national recognition from the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC). It has additionally been presented at conferences for both organizations and to students at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and the University of Cincinnati’s School of Design.
For further information, please email me or visit my LinkedIn profile.
