Faculty
Our faculty not only have incredible industry experience, but also are very accessible to students - on campus, by cell phone, via email and even Facebook. Stop by your professor's office if you have questions about your classes, drop in for advice on getting a killer internship or chat over coffee about your career goals. The relationships you build with your professors will last a lifetime.
Andrew Adelson
Assistant Professor
Adelson is an award-winning producer with more than 25 years experience at senior levels of the entertainment industry.
Scott Arundale
Assistant Professor
As a teenager growing up in England, Arundale spent an inordinate amount of time in art houses watching classic European films.
John Badham
Professor
Everyone should have a poster over their desk: “Character, character, character.” So says John Badham.
Ross Brown
Assistant Professor
Over the course of more than 30 years in film and television, Ross Brown has seen and done nearly everything in the business, from top to bottom.
Emily Carman
Assistant Professor
Emily Carman has channeled her passion for film history into a versatile career in film archiving, curatorship, scholarship, and teaching. She earned her Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA's Department of Film, Television and Digital Media prior to joining the Dodge College film studies faculty.
Martha Coolidge
Professor
Ms. Coolidge made history in 2001 when she was elected the first woman President of the Directors Guild of America.
Bill Dill A.S.C.
Professor
Bill Dill remembers the exact moment when “the world stopped spinning.”
Barbara Doyle
Professor & Film Division Chair
Not everyone can say they’ve lived out their dream as a rock and roll singer.
Rona Edwards
Assistant Professor
Former Vice President of Creative Affairs for Emmy-winners such as John Larroquette ("Night Court") and fellow Dodge faculty member Michael Phillips ("Close Encounters Of The Third Kind"), Edwards has worked with multiple major networks, including ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Rick Ferncase
Associate Professor
As with many artists, Rick Ferncase is fascinated by the light—by its play, its influence, its ability to shade meaning and comment on the scene at hand.
Paul Gulino
Associate Professor
Paul Gulino believes in Hitchcock’s adage that “films are made on paper.”
David Kost
Assistant Professor
Some people love watching movies. Some love making them. Dave Kost loves both.
Michael Kowalski
Associate Dean & Chief Academic Officer
As a documentarian, Michael Kowalski says, you start with many views of reality, but you have to find an angle or focus.
Judy Kriger
Assistant Professor
What do Italian architecture and Gumby have in common? For Judy Kriger, these two diverse subjects opened her eyes to a career in animation.
Bill Kroyer
Professor
“With all these cool digital tools and tricks coming along, the tendency is to get mesmerized by them. It is the vision itself that is the master.”
Andrew Lane
Assistant Professor
Growing up in Miami, Andrew Lane knew there was only one thing he ever wanted to do in life: Make movies.
Nam Lee
Assistant Professor
Before she came to the U.S. in 2000, Nam Lee was a film critic and print journalist in Seoul, Korea.
Dan Leonard
Associate Dean & Chief Technology Officer
Like many a young man who dreams of becoming a rock star, Dan Leonard found film a good outlet for his creative energies in tandem with his love of all things technical.
Dezso Magyar
Professor
Pressured by his father to become a lawyer, Dezso Magyar studied law by day and music by night, hoping to pursue his own dream of a life in the arts.
Jeff McCracken
Associate Professor
“Acting truthfully under imaginary circumstances” is the battle cry Jeff McCracken learned from legendary acting teachers Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, Jack Garfein, William Alderson, and Larry Moss.
Cory O’Connor
Assistant Professor
Cory O’Connor loved his nine years at The Disney Channel “promoting a brand I absolutely believed in” through a perfect marriage of marketing and creativity.
Larry Paull
Professor
As a young boy who liked to draw, Larry Paull grew up dreaming of himself as Howard Roarke, Ayn Rand’s idealistic architect in The Fountainhead who refuses to bend his individual artistic temperament to the tastes of the masses.
Dan Pavelin
Assistant Professor
If Dan Pavelin hears voices where others don’t, it would be no surprise.
Michael Phillips
Michael Phillips grew up in Brooklyn, where, “they had double features with about ten cartoons for 25 cents. I used to go every week… When I saw The Day the Earth Stood Still, I stayed in the theater all day and watched it three times in a row.”
Alex Rose
Professor & Chair of Special Projects and Industry Initiatives
Producer Alex Rose combines a tremendous filmmaking background with teaching at U.C.L.A., U.S.C. and the American Film Institute, where she played a major role in the development of the producing program.
Adam Rote
Assistant Professor
The marriage was inevitable. Artists in love with science fiction and fantasy fell head over heels for the endless possibilities of computer graphics software.
Sally Rubin
Assistant Professor
The power of documentary filmmaking to convey the nuance and subtlety of human experience is breathtaking.
Paul Seydor
Professor
Editor Paul Seydor has a unique background, combining a Ph.D. in American Civilization with a triple emphasis in American Literature, American Intellectual History and Film.
Janell Shearer
Professor & Media Arts Division Chair
"I'm just naturally curious about people,” says Janell Shearer
Joe Slowensky
Professor
As a manager of development at NBC Productions, Joe Slowensky saw every kind of idea for film and TV projects you can imagine—and some you can’t.
Jeff Swimmer
Associate Professor
It’s one thing to see the devastation from a natural disaster on television, but to be there in person to film the devastation as the wreckage of people’s lives is thrown into military trucks is life altering.
Dawn Taubin
Professor
Sometimes, that’s how careers get started. A seemingly inconsequential decision leads to a newly discovered passion. For Taubin, such a discovery led to the beginning of a wildly successful career in film marketing.
Jurg Walther
Instructor
As a teacher, Jurg Walther wants his students to understand “the poetic potential that filmmaking has.”
David Ward
Professor
Director/screenwriter David Ward brings a distinguished filmography to leading the screenwriting program in the Dodge College.
Pete Weitzner
Associate Professor
Bored with life as a CPA, Pete Weitzner decided to follow his dream—to be a sportscaster—and went back to school to earn a master’s degree.
Paul Wolansky
Associate Professor
Seeing Akira Kurosawa’s "The Seven Samurai" marked a turning point in Paul Wolansky’s life.