New faculty spotlight: Michelle L. Herman brings interactive design, VR/AR expertise to SMAD

By Meirra McChristian, staff writer

Two months before starting at JMU, Prof. Michelle L. Herman was in Italy collaborating with CNC robots to rough-carve and then manually hand-finish a marble sculpture.

Herman’s participation in the Digital Stone Project is one of several innovative, creative projects that combine technology and physical media that she has been working on. 

Herman, SMAD’s newest Interactive Design faculty member, comes to JMU after working at the Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. She said she became aware of JMU and SMAD through friends and previous colleagues. 

“I just felt like that it was a perfect match and the school of Media, Arts and Design I was really fascinated thinking about traditional media and new and evolving technologies in the same curriculum,” Herman said. 

In her first semester, she is teaching the 203 “Foundations of User Experience” and the SMAD 317 “User Interaction Design” course. These classes call on her background in both coding and applied arts. 

She says she is enjoying every aspect of being an educator, especially “unexpected discovery moments.”

“Teaching is a lot like making an art project because you have all this planning and you're kind of thinking how the structure even of a semester course is going to be,” she said. “Things unfold that you didn't know would happen. And that's the really exciting part.” 

Herman said she is excited to combine her teaching and artistic background in the classroom. With her background in fine arts and digital media she said she hopes to help students realize they can do a lot more than they think. 

“I'm trying to teach to different learning styles in the classroom. I think that's really important for confidence building, which is probably one of the most important things in terms of making creative work,” Herman said.

Herman said her goal is for students to cultivate and sharpen their skills so that they are in-demand job candidates. And she said she wants to help SMAD stay on the front-end of media technology. 

“I would really love to help shape the future of SMAD and exploring new technologies like VR, AR, AI. I think that there's a lot of potential for considering new paradigms of user experience,” Herman said.