California College of the Arts welcomes 10 new faculty and chairs across the college

San Francisco, CA—October 3, 2024—California College of the Arts (CCA) is pleased to announce the appointment of 10 new faculty members and chairs to the college, including both new hires and current faculty. These individuals come to the college from organizations like Pixar, Netflix, and Design Forward, bringing a wealth of industry expertise, artistry, and innovation to the curriculum at CCA.

“We’re honored to have the opportunity to welcome this group of talented individuals at such an exciting time as we complete our campus expansion in San Francisco. At CCA, students excel as creatives through a rich curriculum and a vibrant, interdisciplinary learning environment. We can’t wait to see how each of these individuals will inspire our students and continue to shape the future of the college.”

– Dean of Architecture Keith Krumiede, Dean of Design Helen Maria Nugent, Dean of Fine Arts Sunny Smith, and Dean of Humanities & Sciences Jacqueline Francis

Architecture

Mark Donohue, Chair of Architecture (BArch)

Mark Donohue, AIA, is a licensed, practicing architect and educator. He has taught at the college for 27 years, and served as chair of the BArch program from 2012 to 2017, now taking on the role again. He completed his practical training in architecture offices in the United States and Switzerland. Donohue is principal and cofounder of Visible Research Office (VRO), a multidisciplinary firm based in San Francisco. Through VRO, he researches new fabrication techniques and innovative materials and their application in the construction process. Projects test out this research at varying scales and uses, from private homes to interior interventions for institutions to large-scale cultural projects created for competitions.

Design

Elena Pacenti, Director of MDes in Interaction Design

Elena Pacenti has over three decades of experience leading cutting-edge design research projects and establishing innovative education programs at international design schools. After earning her PhD at the Polytechnic University of Milan, she joined Domus Academy, where she directed the Research Center, the Master in Service & Experience Design, and the Design Department. She then established the School of Design at the NewSchool of Architecture & Design in San Diego.

She has also focused much of her career on pioneering work in the field of design for services and advocated for the strategic value of design and the arts in organizations such as Service Design Network, Design Forward, and Future of Design Education.

Ajuan Mance, Illustration faculty member

Ajuan Mance is an artist and writer based in Oakland, California. Mance is the author and illustrator of 1001 Black Men, Living While Black, and What Do Brothas Do All Day? Their comics collection, Gender Studies: The True Adventures of an Accidental Outlaw, was published this spring. Mance’s comics have also appeared in several anthologies, including the just-released, We Belong: An All-Black, All-Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comics Anthology. A former professor of African American literature, Mance is also the author of two scholarly books, Inventing Black Women and Before Harlem.

Fine Arts

Giselle Bailey, Chair of Film

Giselle Bailey is a Jamaican American director whose work blends documentary, narrative and contemporary art to create content that is explosively visual and metaphorical. She is listed in DOC NYC’s celebrated 40 under 40 list and is a Concordia directorial fellow. Her recent directorial work includes HBO’s two-part documentary Seen & Heard (TBA 2025) that features icons that are transforming the TV industry including Oprah Winfrey, Swizz Beatz, Terence Nance, Shonda Rhimes, Cord Jefferson, Lena Waithe, and Issa Rae, Netflix docu-series Ladies First, Hulu/ONYX docu-series Hair Tales, and the HBO feature documentary The Legend of the Underground, which was EP’d by John Legend and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Her work has been honored with awards and nominations by IDA, NAACP, and Critics’ Choice among others.

Diedrick Brackens, Textiles faculty member

Diedrick Brackens is a contemporary artist known for his intricate, hand-crafted textile works that explore themes of identity, race, and queerness. He earned an MFA in textiles from California College of the Arts in 2014, where he now teaches in the textiles program. Brackens uses traditional textile-making to weave stories about racial injustice, Black and queer resilience, and his personal experiences. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant (2019) and the Los Angeles Artadia Award (2019), and his work has been shown in many solo exhibitions across the United States.

Sean Muriithi, Animation faculty member

Originally from Kenya and raised in Dallas, Texas, Muriithi is an animator who graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2018. His professional journey has taken him through studios such as Pixar, Rooster Teeth, Brazen and Riot Games. Outside of work, Muriithi enjoys traveling, exploring new languages, and staying active. His diverse experiences and passions reflect his dynamic approach to both his career and personal interests.

Humanities & Sciences

Mel Gillman, Chair of Comics

Mel Gillman, chair of BFA Comics and MFA Comics, is a graphic novelist and colored pencil artist who specializes in queer and trans fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of several graphic novels, including As the Crow Flies (Iron Circus Comics 2017), Stage Dreams (Lerner/Graphic Universe 2019), and most recently, Other Ever Afters (Random House Graphic 2022).

Their work has won numerous awards, including a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal, an Excellence in Graphic Literature Award, and a Stonewall Honor Award from the American Library Association. Currently, they are working on two original horror graphic novels, as well as a series of educational zines about urban foraging in the U.S.

Nilgun Bayraktar, Chair of History of Art and Visual Culture

Nilgun Bayraktar is a film and visual culture scholar specializing in the intersections between cinema, art, and cross-border mobility. Her research has been published in numerous academic journals and edited volumes. She is the co-editor of Rethinking Defamiliarization in Literature and Visual Culture (Palgrave 2024) and author of Cinema Beyond Europe (Routledge 2018), which examines cinematic and artistic representations of migration and mobility in Europe since the 1990s.

Her current book project, Border Futurities, explores speculative imagination, counter-memory, and futurity in contemporary art and film. She received a BA in Cultural Studies from Sabanci University, Istanbul, and a PhD in Performance & Film Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Yalitza Ferreras, Writing faculty member

Yalitza Ferreras is a Dominican American writer and longtime San Franciscan. She was recently a Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin, and a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University. She has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Bellevue Literary Review’s Fiction Prize, and her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere.

About California College of the Arts

Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts (CCA) educates students to shape culture and society through art, architecture, design, and writing. The college offers a rich curriculum of 22 undergraduate and 10 graduate programs taught by a faculty of expert practitioners. Located in the vibrant San Francisco Bay Area, CCA uniquely prepares students for lifelong creative work by fostering social and environmental responsibility, innovation, and community engagement. Graduates are highly sought-after by companies such as Pixar, Apple, IDEO, and Google, and many go on to launch their own successful businesses.

CCA’s newly expanded campus adds 82,300 square feet of space to teach, make, and present art in a continuous indoor-outdoor environment. Designed by world-renowned architecture firm Studio Gang, the new addition, completed this fall 2024, brings together 30 academic programs and disciplines, student housing and dining, and interdisciplinary learning. For more information, visit cca.edu.

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