Creativity @ SNU
Studio Art, Creative Writing, & Communications
Our faculty are exhibiting artists, working journalists, and award-winning authors. You will build a portfolio of your work with their close mentorship, and gain the skills to survive in the challenging field that is creative work. Entrepreneurial thinking is nothing new in the creative and communication arts. Learn to make a living as a creative while you work in an environment that has inspired generations. Our galleries host internationally known artists, and our own BFA students' shows, side by side. Our Fine Arts, Journalism, and Creative Writing students and faculty win awards and top graduate school spots across the country.
Join us. Exhibit, publish, create and innovate in materials from metal to clay, ink to the internet, and on screens big and small.
Learn about Studio Art, Creative Writing, & Communications @ SNU
Meet Your Mentors
Christopher Anderson International Programs and ELL Coordinator; Associate ProfessorHumanitiesEnglish
Work Phone: 775-831-1314 x7555workWork Email: canderson@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA, San Diego State University;
- MA, San Francisco State University
Donna Axton Music Program Chair; ProfessorHumanities; Fine ArtsMusic, Clinical Psychology
Work Phone: 775-831-1314 x7586workWork Email: daxton@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- MA in Counseling Psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute
- BS, Allegheny College
Donna Axton is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She had her own private practice for several years, and held internships at Tahoe Safe Alliance, Truckee Group, Individual and Family Therapy Services, Glenshire Elementary School in Truckee, and St. Nicholas Community Services in Tahoe City during her training. At Sierra Nevada College she teaches the counseling related psychology courses: Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Art and Music Therapy, Clinical Methodologies, Health Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, and Human Development.
Axton spent 14 years touring the world as a pianist in Hoyt Axton’s band. She played country western, boogie woogie, gospel, and rock and roll on 21 albums, co-produced two, and appeared on dozens of television shows, including the Tonight Show. She has many writing, arranging and directing credits to her name and has directed, conducted and/or played for scores of local musical productions at all levels from community to professional. She is also known as a chamber music and solo pianist.
Shannon Beets Executive Vice President and ProvostHumanities
Work Phone: 775-831-1314 x 7405workWork Email: sbeets@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA, Religion and Philosophy, University of La Verne
- MA, Women’s Studies in Religion, Claremont Graduate University
Shannon Beets brings twenty years of experience in higher education as a senior administrator and faculty member. Immediately prior to assuming the role of Interim President of the College, Ms. Beets served for three years as Executive Vice President and Provost. She joined Sierra Nevada College in 2006 and has held a variety of positions across key academic areas, including as Vice President for Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness, as Associate Provost, as the Dean of Education for the Teacher Education Department, and as Dean of Enrollment Services.
During her tenure she has worked closely with faculty, the executive leadership, and the Board to create high impact academic programs, measure student learning outcomes, and assess institutional effectiveness. She successfully led the College’s most recent reaccreditation process; and she has launched three successful Master’s degree programs, including the Master of Arts in Education (M.Ed.), and two innovative, low-residency programs: the Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Creative Writing and the MFA in Interdisciplinary Art. Most recently she spearheaded development of the College’s Strategic Plan for 2014-2021 through a process that engaged all sectors of the College community, as well as key external stakeholders.
As an innovative educator, she has passionately advocated for active learning, leading and collaborating with SNC faculty to create significant new initiatives to increase high impact practices in the classroom – a distinguishing hallmark of Sierra Nevada College. In addition to her administrative responsibilities and her work in designing innovative curriculum, she continues to teach, both in the landmark freshman year experience course, CORE 101, and in senior level courses in a variety of areas.
Beets is a frequent presenter on academic innovation and student engagement both nationally and internationally, recently representing the College in China during a multi-university tour to collaborate on the teaching of entrepreneurial thinking to Chinese youth. In keeping with her strong commitment to the community, Beets serves as the facilitator for the North Lake Tahoe-Truckee Leadership Program, which trains, informs and engages accomplished professionals throughout the region in preparation for leadership roles in the community.
Biography- BA, University of Oregon
- MFA, University of Arizona
A Nevada Fellowship of the Arts recipient, Dudley and his art are deeply informed by mountains, desert, rock-climbing, and being alone both in the land and in a more existential way. His photography, installation, sculpture, and video work has been exhibited in galleries, public collections, and alternative spaces, including Mindy Oh in Chicago, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the A.M. Project and Treehouse Galleries in Los Angeles, and the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. Exhibiting at times under the name of his alter ego Jimmy Jewel, he is a member of the art collaborative, d3ms, and his ongoing photographic collaborations with performance artist Joanna Frueh have resulted in portfolios published by UC Berkley, University of Nevada, and Nevada Museum of Art presses. Courses: New Genres, Contemporary Issues, Gallery Exhibition, Professional Practices, Photography, Sculpture.
Suzanne Watts Gollery Chair, Department of Science and Technology; ProfessorScience & TechnologyBiology
Work Phone: 775-831-1314 x7456workWork Email: sgollery@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BS, Microbiology, Arizona State University
- PhD, Immunology, University of California, Berkeley
Suzanne Gollery is all about her students. Her focus is on problem-based learning that promotes understanding and application of biology facts and concepts, rather than lectures and memorization of an ever-growing body of details. Microbiology, which is easily accessible to undergraduate students, is her central research interest. She also has research experience in immunogenetics and human genetics.
As the cell biologist at SNU, Gollery teaches the general biology series and the upper-division ‘skin-and-in’ courses like anatomy and physiology, genetics, microbiology, and biochemistry. She is the advisor and research mentor for most Biology majors. At SNU, she received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002, and the Distinguished Advising Award in 2012.
For fun, Gollery loves natural history, hiking, camping, and kayaking in the Eastern Sierra. She and her husband raised their children in Incline Village. The family also makes music together with the SNU college chorus, and with TOCCATA, a regional orchestra and chorus, in which Gollery plays flute and sings soprano.
Rosie Hackett Outdoor Adventure Leadership Program Chair; Associate ProfessorInterdisciplinary Studies; HumanitiesOutdoor Leadership
Work Phone: 775-831-1314 x7499workWork Email: rhackett@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA, Anthropology and Geology, Bowdoin College
- MA, Multicultural Adventure Education, National University
Rosie Hackett teaches classes in interdisciplinary studies, outdoor leadership, wilderness ethics, service learning and senior portfolio. Rosie won SNC’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2011 and the Distinguished Advising Award in 2015. Her mission is to empower her students to become “growth” junkies, passionate leaders, competent outdoor professionals, and lifelong environmental stewards.
Rosie has dedicated the past 20 years to field instruction, curriculum design, environmental stewardship, and leadership development, and is a fervent believer in the power of outdoor adventure education to change and enrich lives. Her extensive and varied field experience includes instructing/guiding sailing, sea kayaking, whitewater rafting/kayaking, rock climbing, mountaineering, backcountry skiing, and outdoor leadership for schools and organizations all over the world.
Prior to establishing SNC’s Outdoor Adventure Leadership Program, Rosie developed and directed the successful Wilderness Education Program at Lake Tahoe Community College. While growing LTCC’s Wilderness Program, she was also an assistant professor at Prescott College and a lead facilitator in organizational leadership for Adventure Associates.
On her days off, Rosie can usually be found skiing, surfing, climbing or biking with her husband, Bret, her two children, Ruby and Van, and her dog, Osa, near her home in South Lake Tahoe or in a far away place.
Mary Kenny Associate ProfessorFine Arts
Home Phone: 775-831-1314 x7515homeWork Email: mkenny@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA, Baldwin-Wallace College
- MFA, Kent State University
Mary is currently interested in creating works on paper which includes combining collage, printmaking, drawing and painting. These works on paper are explorations of media, idea and repetition. Many of the images she uses are borrowed from familiar printed material such as science textbooks, children’s books and parenting manuals. Mary has participated in numerous shows nationally and regionally, most recently a solo exhibition at the McKinley Arts Center in Reno, NV. Her prints are in the collection of Kent State University, Iowa State University, and Zygote Press among others. She is an associate professor at Sierra Nevada College teaching drawing, painting, printmaking and design.
Robert King Honors Program Chair; Associate ProfessorHumanities; MFA in Creative WritingPhilosophy, Literature, Political Economy
Home Phone: 775-831-1314 x7493homeWork Email: rking@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA, English Literature, University of Florida
- MA, Literature, Theory, and Cultural Studies, Purdue University
- PhD, Philosophy, Purdue University
Robert Drury King is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities at Sierra Nevada College. He is also a research fellow with the Centre Leo Apostel at the Free University of Brussels. He has been a visiting fellow at Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy and at the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Humanities Division. As a graduate of the Philosophy and Literature program at Purdue University, his doctoral dissertation, “System Individuation in Differential and Dialectical Ontology: Deleuze, Hegel, and Systematic Thought,” received the 2011 College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Dissertation Award.
Robert publishes in the fields of systems theory, philosophy, and political economy. He has studied at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University; the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Citta di Castello, Italy; and within the Unseld Lecture Series at the University of Tübingen. He has been a visiting fellow of the World Congress Summer School in Glasgow, Scotland with the Association for Social Economics; in the National Endowment for the Humanities’ 2012 Summer Institute in Experimental Philosophy at the University of Arizona; and a fellow at the National Humanities Center’s Summer Institutes in Literary Studies, in Robert Pippin’s J.M. Coetzee seminar.
Robert has received a grant from The John F. Kennedy School for North American Studies, and a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society which he used to study the Norbert Wiener Papers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an inaugural member of the London Graduate School’s Summer Academy in Critical Humanities and he was a text seminar leader on Hegel’s Logic under Angelica Nuzzo at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in the summer of 2014. His work has been the subject of a Guy L. Leonard Memorial Lecture at the University of Nevada, Reno and an Illuminations Lecture at Purdue University. He is also the book review editor for Constructivist Foundations.
Brennan Lagasse Assistant ProfessorInterdisciplinary Studies; Science and TechnologyOutdoor Leadership; Environmental & Social Sustainability
Work Phone: 775-881-1314 x7423workWork Email: blagasse@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA, Sociology and Anthropology, Colgate University
- MA, Environment and Community, Humboldt State University
Brennan is a passionate writer, educator, and mountain guide. His writing and guiding work has brought him to all seven of the world’s continents. He finds inspiration backcountry skiing, but is just as inspired facilitating open, honest, and dynamic classroom spaces. Not only does Brennan travel extensively to ski and guide, but he also presents and attends conferences ranging from the Teacher for Social Justice Conference to the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference enhancing his knowledge base and experience in the current field of sustainability.
His writing reflects a diversity of travel and a pursuit of life-long learning. He has been published as a travel, music, adventure, ski, and activist writer both domestically and also abroad. His work can be found in online media, newspapers, and magazines, and his master’s degree research is available in book form.
Brennan teaches Wilderness Survival at Truckee Meadows Community College in addition to teaching in the Interdisciplinary Studies and Environmental Science programs at Sierra Nevada College. His continued mission at SNC is to inspire his students to become aware, critical, and well-rounded liberal arts students. He hopes to use his knowledge to inspire and inform his students during their time at Sierra Nevada College – and beyond.
![Photo of Chris Lanier]( "Photo of Chris Lanier")
Biography- BA, New College of California, San Francisco
- MFA, University of California, Davis
Chris Lanier is an artist with a background in both traditional and digital media, and a demonstrated interest in hybrid forms, having worked in multimedia performance, digital animation, web production, and comics. His animation has screened at Sundance and won awards at several international festivals, including the Grand Prize for Internet Animation at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. His graphic novel “Combustion” was published by Fantagraphics Books, and his comics have appeared in a variety of venues, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Reader, Nickelodeon Magazine, and the Indiana Review. He is also an essayist and critic whose art criticism has appeared in a variety of online and print publications, including The Believer, HiLobrow.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon Magazine, the Bay Guardian, and the Comics Journal. Most recently, he curated the exhibit “The Art of Howl,” featuring concept and animation art from the film “Howl,” which featured James Franco as the beat poet Allen Ginsberg. He also did storyboarding for the film. He is currently the Associate Professor of Digital Art at Sierra Nevada College.
Dan O’Bryan Associate Provost; ProfessorHumanitiesEthics & History
Work Phone: 775-831-1314 x7524workWork Email: dobryan@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA, University of Nevada, Reno
- MA, University of California, Berkeley
- PhD, University of Washington
O’Bryan teaches courses in American literature, philosophy, world religions, American and world history, ethics, and Latin. His interests include historiography and the challenges that new perspectives such as postmodernism offer to traditional historical understanding; philosophy in terms of the many intersections between Asian and Western thought; the psychological and sociological dimensions of religion; and the role of literature as the most sensitive reflection of any historical epoch.
Biography- BFA, University of Colorado
- MFA, Claremont Graduate University
Sheri joined SNU in 1997. Several years ago she began organizing popular travel courses and workshops to Japan, in addition to her ceramics courses on campus. Her work has been featured in Ceramics Monthly, Clay Times, Black Pearl and Other Saturated Metallic Glazes, and Ceramic Sculpture: Inspiring Techniques, and included in both local and national exhibitions. She was one of NCECA’s 50 Women for their 50th anniversary exhibition.
![Photo of Rick Parsons]( "Photo of Rick Parsons")
Biography- BFA, Stephen F. Austin State University
- MA University of Dallas
- MFA, University of Dallas
Rick’s artwork focuses on the effects of environmental pollutants on the body. He uses materials as metaphor to address the looming impact of a culture dependent on diminishing resources. Rick has served as Sculpture Program Coordinator at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and has taught at both the University of Dallas, and Colorado Mountain College. He has been a visiting artist at Colorado College, San Jose State University, University of Miami, and Arizona State University. His sculpture has been exhibited throughout the country and was featured in a solo show in the Charles and Dorothy Clark Gallery at the University of Texas – Pan America. In 2007 Rick’s sculpture was the focus of an article in Sculpture magazine. He was recently published in the book Confrontational Ceramics: The Artist as Social Critic by Judith S. Schwartz and was featured in the documentary film “Questions of Art,” by Zach Jankovic.
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Biography- BS, Northern Arizona University
- MA, University of California, Santa Barbara
Daryl Teittinen Assistant ProfessorInterdisciplinary Studies; HumanitiesOutdoor Technical Training
Work Phone: (775) 831-1314 x7530workWork Email: dteittinen@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA in Environmental Science, Prescott College
- MEd in Advanced Teaching and Leadership, Sierra Nevada College
Daryl Teittinen is a passionate outdoor adventurer in all seasons. He believes that challenging ourselves to complete big adventures in good style leads to a great life and constant learning.
Daryl has been adventuring and working in the outdoors for nearly 20 years as an educator, rock climbing and skiing guide, wilderness rafting guide, avalanche forecaster, and EMT. His travels have taken him to the edge of the Arctic ocean, through the Sea of Cortez in Baja California Mexico, and all over the beloved Sierra Nevada. In particular, Daryl is a rock climber with a love of the walls of Yosemite National Park, where he has completed over 20 big wall ascents.
In addition to working with SNU, Daryl is a professional observer for the Sierra Avalanche Center, backcountry skiing and climbing guide at Tahoe Mountain School, and member of the River Field Studies Network. He is an American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE) certified course leader, professional member of the American Avalanche Association, American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) Apprentice Rock Guide, certified Swiftwater Rescue Tech, and an EMT-B.
When not working, you can find Daryl enjoys sharing the mountains, rock cliffs and rivers with his friends and family as much as with his students. His young daughter Eliza already loves climbing and rafting!
Katie Zanto Interdisciplinary Studies Program Chair, Associate ProfessorInterdisciplinary Studies; HumanitiesEnglish, Outdoor Education
Work Phone: 775-831-1314 x7529workWork Email: kzanto@sierranevada.eduINTERNETBiography- BA, English, Dartmouth College
- MA, English Education & Curriculum Development, Stanford University
- CLAD, credential in English, Mills College.
Katie teaches English composition: Writing and the Environment and Educational Issues, communications, Principles of Interdisciplinary Studies, Service Learning , Senior Portfolio and a variety of other courses in the Humanities Department. She also teaches mountaineering and telemark skiing at the college.
Under the auspices of University of California, Berkeley, she designed and founded a literacy and leadership program, Adventure, Risk and Challenge (ARC) for high school youth. In 2011, she received the LL Bean Outdoor Hero award for her innovation with this program. A former outward bound instructor, she has taught mountaineering, rock climbing, backpacking, expeditionary canoeing and backcountry snowboarding courses across the United States for over a decade. She has worked with teachers, families, adults, youth in a range of 1 week to semester long expeditionary courses. She also taught English at Berkeley High School and English Language Development (ELD) at Sierra Mountain Middle School in Truckee.
At Sierra Nevada College, she is currently the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program and the advisor of the First Generation Club. Katie combines her academic focus in communication, writing and integrative learning with her passion for outdoor adventure education with her commitment to social justice and providing access to educational opportunities for all students. Through collaboration with faculty across departments, Katie has helped to build SNC’s Interdisciplinary Studies program. She hopes to bring active learning, service learning, communication skills, and integrative thinking to the college community and to inspire students to get out into the community to make a difference.
The areas of educational excellence at the Sierra Nevada College of Entrepreneurial Leadership are CREATIVITY (Studio Art, Creative Writing, & Communications), LEADERSHIP (Enterprise Creation and Management), and SUSTAINABILITY (the Environmental, Social, & Life Sciences).
