Adam Burns and Melissa Velk

Burns’ and Velk’s innovative teaching idea, “Athens TV Animation Studio,” focuses on nurturing an authentic learning experience for students in broadcasting, art and marketing classes by collaborating to create sets, characters, and scripts for short animation films. Through this work, both classes will work through a major, multi-step process to learn ways of adapting to creative differences and collaborating with large, diverse groups of people to achieve a common goal. The Voya grant will be used in the purchase of materials, software, and technology, which will go towards creating an animation studio. By combining the experiences of two different groups, and uniting them towards a common goal, Burns and Velk hope to gives students the opportunity to explore the intersection of media and design and expand their own creative potential.