Andrew Kenneth Gay
Dean, School of Arts & Communication
Executive Director, The Oregon Center for the Arts
Professor of Digital Cinema
MFA, Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema, University of Central Florida, 2010; BFA, Film Production, University of Central Florida, 2006; BA, English & Philosophy/Religion, Flagler College, 2003
Andrew Kenneth Gay (he/him) leads the School of Arts & Communication and the Oregon Center for the Arts as director and is a tenured professor of Digital Cinema, where he teaches storytelling, career development, and film production management. He received SOU’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2021 and the University Film & Video Association’s National Award for Teaching Excellence in 2022. Before becoming a full-time educator, Andrew worked as a freelance production coordinator, production manager, and assistant director in commercials, reality television, and independent film, and for such companies as Red Bull, Discovery, and Disney. He has written, directed, and produced for both fiction and documentary media and has served as board president of Film Southern Oregon, on the board of the Oregon Media Production Association, as a programmer for the Ashland Independent Film Festival, and serves on the Teaching Committee for EDIT Media (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Teaching Media) and on the board of the University Film & Video Association.
Office: Britt 140
Phone: 541.552.6669
E-Mail: Andrew.Gay@sou.edu
Brandon Givens
Instructor, Director of the Southern Oregon Digital Media Center
MIIS, Digital Art, Film, and Media, Southern Oregon University, 2020; BS, Communication with a concentration in Radio, Television, and Film, Southern Oregon University, 1999
Brandon Givens oversees all operations of Rogue Valley Television and the SOU Digital Media Center, including the DMC’s for-hire production services, which offers employment and professional preparation of our Digital Cinema students. He teaches classes in Studio Production for Film & Television, Broadcast News, Promotional Video, Digital Cinematography, and Film Studies. He has previously worked as a production services manager, live television director, news photographer, and commercial producer/director. He has won an Oregon Associate Press Broadcasters award as an editor, and recently an IMPACT DOCS Award of Merit for his documentary, INCLUDING US. That film was recently acquired by WNET’s AllArts for national distribution and will be available to PBS affiliates around the country. His active projects include Exec. Producer of a horror short, and pursing development of narrative film projects as a Producer/Director, and as a DP. Brandon has served on regional boards in both the Arts and Wildfire Firefighting capacities, and is currently the President of the Southern Oregon Public Television (SOPBS) Board of Directors. He tries to take in films at the cinema as often as possible and encourages everyone, especially film students, to prioritize the big screen for films they want to see.
Office: SOU Digital Media Center
Phone: 541.552.6892
E-Mail: givensb@sou.edu
Christopher Lucas
Associate Professor – Program Coordinator of Digital Cinema
PhD, Department of Radio-TV-Film, University of Texas at Austin; MA, Department of Radio-TV-Film, University of Texas at Austin; BA, The Evergreen State College
Christopher Lucas teaches documentary and narrative cinema production, screenwriting, film editing, and topics in film and media history and criticism. He is one of the founding faculty of the Digital Cinema major at SOU. His publications include “Contemporary Hollywood Cinematography,” from Cinematography, part of Rutger University Press’s Behind the Silver Screen series, and “Cultural Policy, the Public Sphere, and the Struggle to Define Low Power Radio,” in the Journal of Radio Studies. He has presented research at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, University Film & Video Association, and the Popular Culture Association, among other conferences. He is a co-founder of flowjournal.org, a popular site for scholarly media criticism. Dr. Lucas also produced the feature documentaries Raising Aniya (DCEFF, 2025) and Above All Else (SXSW, 2014), the award-winning short documentary Shoulders Deep (DocuFest, 2020) and numerous other shorts and commercial projects. He has been a participant in the Spotlight On Documentaries Forum at IFP’s Film Week and Doc Society’s Climate Story Lab.He was awarded a doctorate by the University of Texas at Austin in 2011 with specializations in media industry studies and film studies.
Office: Britt 143
Phone: 541.552.6425
E-Mail: lucasr@sou.edu
Vaun Monroe
Assistant Professor
MFA, Film & Media Arts, Temple University 2002; BA, Liberal Arts, The Evergreen State College, 1998
Monroe teaches storytelling, screenwriting, directing, and film analysis in SOU’s Digital Cinema program. He has taught African-American film studies at Cornell University, Ithaca College, Morgan State University, Columbia College Chicago and Wiley College. He is an award winning director of numerous plays with productions mounted at ETA Creative Arts, The Artistic Home, The American Blues Theatre and The Goodman. He was a film programmer for “Black Perspectives” for the Chicago International Film Festival and is a member of the African American Film Critics Association. His artistic interests lie in the humanistic, dramatic portrayal of Blacks in America. He considers himself a modern-day griot who utilizes the mediums of stage, film and television to narrate stories of the Black community.
Office: Britt 156
Phone: 541.552.8201
E-Mail: monroev@sou.edu
Erik Palmer, PhD
Professor — Program Coordinator of Media Innovation
PhD, Journalism, University of Oregon, 2008; MA, Photojournalism, University of Texas at Austin, 1995; BA, Journalism, Texas State University, 1986
Dr. Erik Palmer teaches social media, visual communication, and media entrepreneurship. The list of innovative courses he has launched at SOU includes Strategic Social Media, Social Media Campaigns, Design Thinking, Creative Industries, Comic Studies, Creative Careers Bootcamp, Sports Communication, Mobile Photo & Video, and Digital Life. He also recently completed a sabbatical year as a 2019-20 U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of Ghana. In his most recent scholarly work, he has explored changes in the culture of image-making motivated by the emergence of visual social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and presented his findings at international peer-reviewed conferences, and he edited a special issue on Really Social Photojournalism for Visual Communication Quarterly in 2017. He has twice been honored with Tow-Knight Fellowships in Disruptive Journalism Education and convened with cohorts of Disruptive Fellows at the Online News Association’s 2017 and 2018 conferences in Washington, DC, and Austin, Texas. Please take a moment to visit his website.
Phone: 541.552.6880
E-Mail: palmere@sou.edu
Precious Vida Yamaguchi
Department Chair, Professor
PhD, Communication & Media Studies, Bowling Green State University, 2010; MA, Communication, Pepperdine University, 2005; BA, Studio Art, Humboldt State University
Dr. Precious Yamaguchi teaches intercultural and international communication at SOU. Her academic research is interdisciplinary, focusing broadly on issues of culture, identity, generation, technology, social media, and international textile markets. Her single-authored book, The Journeys, and Strength of Japanese American Women: Stories and Life Experiences During and After World War II, was published by Lexington Books in 2015. She has received the Distinguished Faculty Award, a Raider Academy Award, and the Queer Resource Center’s Erika Giesen Outstanding Faculty Award during her time at Southern Oregon University, and also a Top Paper Award from the National Communication Association. When Dr. Yamaguchi is off-campus, she enjoys traveling, painting, hiking, and spending time with family and friends from all over the world.
Office: Britt 150
Phone: 541.552.6241
E-Mail: yamaguchp@sou.edu
Nora Zubizaretta
Assistant Professor
Nora Zubizarreta is an assistant professor in SOU’s Digital Cinema program. She received her MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University and her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. While at Tisch she produced Umama, which won gold at the Student Academy Awards. Nora has since worked professionally in film and television production management in New York and Los Angeles. Her filmmaking and photography practice is rooted in analogue techniques and her work is haunted by ideas of our natural environments and how we engage with them. Her moving image work has screened at Cosmic Rays, Elevation Film Festival, X nodoCCS Video Festival, Dinosaur Microcinema, Wide Open Experimental Film Festival and has been published in the Denver Quarterly Fives. Nora’s photographs have been exhibited by Peel Gallery, Black Box Gallery, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Jameson Gallery, and the Rubenstein Arts Center.
Office: Britt 144
Phone: 541.552.6333
E-Mail: zubizarretan@sou.edu
Contact the Digital Cinema Program
SOU Digital Cinema Program
1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland, OR 97520
541.552.6425
– Questions About Digital Cinema? –