Professor, Faculty Director
(425) 739-8256
Technology Center, T414H
MFA, Graphic Design, the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Steve is a seasoned design educator, specializing in interdisciplinary design, graphic design, human centered design and environmental graphic design. His previous appointments include: the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; North Carolina State University; Arizona State University; and the University of Washington. He has been the faculty director for the Bachelor of Technology in Applied Design program at LWTech since 2010.
He has over 25 years of professional experience in design, brand development and strategy, brand positioning, design education, as well as curriculum development and public speaking. As a seasoned executive, Steve utilizes his unique talent of monitoring current and future cultural and technological trends, along with his background in semiology and design principles to help build relevant design concepts, products and special initiatives.
During his career Steve has directed many precedent branding projects including: The North Carolina Arts Council; Highline Community College; Herman Miller Dealer Extranet; Delta Marine; Gerding Edlen Development; Pioneer Museum of Motorcycles; Arscentia; and MPL2.com. He has also contributed to many branding projects as a strategist, researcher, creative director and designer including: Microsoft Education; Microsoft Backoffice; Microsoft Publisher (Office); Corbis Images; Microsoft Recruiting and Microsoft Press.
Steve has held executive level positions for design agencies as well as Internet development firms, including: Parallel Communications; MPL2 / Saltmine Interactive; Siteworks; Aris; and Arscentia. Over the past ten years, Steve has built three strategic branding and design practices, and is also co-founder and principal of Think2a. He is currently a partner and design consultant at Lot22-Creative.
Professor
(425) 739-8415
Technology Center, T414N
Karen Holum, Professor and Chair of the Design department has been with Lake Washington Institute of Technology for ten years. Karen earned her master’s degree in Human Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Washington and her Bachelor's in Business & Marketing from Antioch University, Seattle.
She is an award-winning visual designer with over 30 years’ experience in the design industry and has designed for corporations, non-profits, government, and start-ups. Karen has owned a design company for many years and specializes in web and identity design. Clients have included Nordstrom, Immunex, Accium BioSciences and Savied Therapeutics. She has a special interest in typography and enjoys drawing and painting. Additionally, she was the Creative Services Manager for a large corporation in San Francisco, California, where she managed a team of 10 creative professionals.
Professor, Department Chair
(425) 739-8327
East Building, E227G
Professor (Humanities Department)
(425) 739-8181
Technology Center, T414B
Jason Sobottka is a professional artist and arts educator. He is LWTech's first tenured visual art instructor. He exhibits his paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures around the nation. Jason was awarded the Winter 2012 Faculty Excellence Award.
Jason teaches several courses for the BAS in Design degree, including: CMST 302, Mass Communication; HUM 311, Design Theory; and the elective ART 324, Printmaking for Designers. Recently, Jason was an artist-mentor for the Puget Sound Education Service District's Arts Impact teacher training program. In his role, Jason worked with middle-school math teachers to embed visual arts lessons into math curriculum, as part of a research study. Jason taught drawing and printmaking at the University of Minnesota between 1999 and 2001 and was a part-time drawing, painting and design instructor at Green River Community College from 2001 through 2008. His past experience includes working for Tacoma Art Museum's Education Department, where he designed and built the museum's hands-on, art-making gallery, the Open Art Studio.
Prior to joining LWTech, Jason worked for two years at State Farm Mutual Insurance Company's Learning and Development Department, focusing on adult learning theory, leadership and performance improvement. He is certified in the Harrison Behavior Assessment.
Jason earned his Masters of Fine Art degree in visual art (with a minor in related fields-art history) from the University of Minnesota and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors from the University of Montana. He also holds an Associates Degree from Grays Harbor College.
Adjunct Professor
Nick is a research and design strategist with several years of experience working with many of Seattle's technology giants, including Amazon, AT&T, Expedia, Expeditors, Microsoft, and Samsung. His career, divided between working as an independent contributor on technology product teams and as a UX strategy consultant, helped form two necessary components to any successful design strategy: Selling your work and driving actionable, long-term changes. These two are the signature elements Nick strives to communicate in his teaching.
Nick earned his Master's in Human-Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington.
Adjunct Professor
Oscar Baechler is a CG generalist, classical realist, photographer, technical animator, open source advocate, and community organizer. His first job out of college was running an entire pipeline in 2D and 3D for the game studio Prophetic Sky, and has since worked for clients including Allen Institute, Coindexter's, Pluto VR, UBC, US Seafoods, Wiley, and Pearson. His work has been featured in ImagineFX, SIGGRAPH, and art galleries around Seattle.
Oscar created and runs SEABUG (the Seattle Blender User Group) and BLDC (Ballard Life Drawing Co-op), and has presented on art and computer graphics at conferences including SIGGRAPH, LinuxFest Northwest, the Blender Conference, OSCON, Usenix LISA, SeaGL, SIX, WACC and others. When he isn't teaching or freelancing, he can be found drawing with his two children.
Adjunct Professor
In his former life, Dave Dion was a chef running his own catering company. In the late 1990’s when the internet started to bloom, Dave taught himself to design websites, so he could create one for his catering company. When a friend heard he knew HTML, he asked to join Dave in his internet company, which was growing rapidly at that time. He decided to take a chance and change careers. He enrolled at Lake Washington Institute of Technology (then Lake Washington Technical College) to extend his knowledge of the internet and design software. During his time as a student, he was asked to teach an Illustrator course and here he is some 18 years later teaching at LWTech.
In addition to his teaching, he does freelance design and consulting, and works for a small private school as an IT/web manager. When not on a computer, he prefers to be in the woods, on the water, gardening, and/or spending time with his family.
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
- Douglas Adams
Adjunct Professor
Christina Fairley Erickson has been designing and doing front-end website development for over 20 years. Photoshop as well as other Adobe products have figured prominently in her design skillset. Her ability to mix the creative side with coding saw her through the dot-com bust, where she worked in a company that had 300 people that was eventually down-sized to 25. Being a member of the core tech team that was retained, Christina helped the company transform like a phoenix rising from the ashes. She went on to run a small aerospace company’s computer website and tech needs and do freelance website development, while she moved her art practice to a professional level.
Christina’s art centers on textiles, but has expanded to numerous media, including bookmaking, hand-cast paper sculpture, digital photography and design, drawing, printing, and more. Her textile artwork has been exhibited at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky; Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum, Seoul, Korea; Taiwan International Quilt Exhibition (TIQE); the UC Davis Feminist Art Show, The Rio and Sao Paulo Patchwork and Design festivals in Brazil, exhibitions by the Surface Design Association, the Embroiderer’s Guild of America, Contemporary QuiltArt Association, and Studio Art Quilt Associates; as well as many other shows and galleries in the U.S. and abroad. Christina has taught Surface Design (dyeing, painting, embroidery and more) in the LWTech sewing department.
Christina earned a diploma in Art & Design from the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts and is currently completing her diploma in Advanced Experimental Stitch and Multimedia. Christina earned her Bachelor of Science degree with honors from City University. When not making art, Christina enjoys photography, worldwide travel, support for endangered animals, reading, spending time with her family and three dogs.
Adjunct Professor
Thomas Everett Green creates paintings and video installations that reference biology and nature. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Middle Tennessee State University, and a Master of Fina Arts from Memphis College of Art in 2014, where he was the 2012-2013 recipient of the Hohenberg Fellowship. His work has been featured in magazines in the United States, Mexico, and Europe and has been shown in New York, Nashville, Memphis, Seattle, Detroit, and the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. He was curator for the Center for the Arts in Murfreesboro Tennessee 2011 and 2012 and has contributed to publications including Taxi Art Magazine of Guadalajara Mexico and Number: Inc. an independent journal of the Arts for Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. His video installations have been shown at Seattle’s Bumbershoot, Detroit’s D-Lectricity, and in the planetarium dome at Mid-America Science Museum. His paintings have been featured in the collections of LeBonheur Children’s Hospital, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, West Cancer Center, and the Nashville International Airport. He taught foundations courses at Memphis College of Art before moving to Seattle, where he teaches art and design for South Seattle College and Lake Washington Institute of Technology.
Adjunct Professor
Richard Morgan is a senior development chemist at Modumetal, where he works with research, development and scale-up of metal coatings and advanced nanotech systems. Previously, as a chemist at Boeing Defense, Space & Security and senior chemist at Aerojet Rocketdyne, Morgan developed and characterized aerospace propellants and fire suppression systems and maintained metal finishing and surface coatings for space vehicles. Since 2006, he has taught chemistry classes at Lake Washington Technical College and also teaches Green Chemistry and Chemical Stewardship at the University of Washington. Mr. Morgan is the principal for Rick Morgan Technical Consulting.
Adjunct Professor
Tyler Savin brings a wide range of experience to the classroom spanning product design and development. Using his current work experiences as a guide, Tyler focuses on workflows relevant to the industry at the time of instruction. He also places a high priority on portfolio quality work and craft.
Tyler has been designing for the web and mobile since 2010. In this time he has worked for many companies in various capacities including, Microsoft, Boeing, Expedia, Costco, and currently as a full-time designer at Facebook.
Adjunct Professor
Daria Schubert is an adjunct Design faculty member at LWTech. She has extensive experience designing logos, brochures, and advertising. She was design director for Windermere Real Estate during their heyday in the early 2000s.
Daria is also a photographer and adept in the darkroom as well as Lightroom. Daria was born and raised in Northern California and and moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1990 after graduating with a B.S. in Applied Art from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo to be junior designer for Rick Eiber in Seattle. There she designed and produced logos, brochures and signage for Boeing, Ardco, Trade-Marx and hundreds of local businesses.
Daria currently owns a design company that focuses on providing graphic design and photography services for clients such as the French Girl in Seattle, Fitness in the Pink, Bluestone Psychological Services, Salon Savasana, Nola Ahola, Powell Homes & Renovations, Sustainable Streams, Aramco, Village Life, Seattle Musical Theater and a variety of solopreneurs.
Adjunct Professor
Annelle Stotz is an Adjunct Professor in the Design Department at LWTech. Her professional experience is varied, from designing identities to immersive campus experiences. Annelle is passionate about using storytelling and design systems to create experiences that connect people to place.
Originally from Cincinnati, OH, she graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP, Graphic Design program. Since earning her degree, she has leveraged design thinking to build international brands. Working for design agencies, event agencies, and architectural firms, both large and small, she has led teams to success with clients such as P&G, Amazon, Pampers, Adidas, and higher education, cultural and civic institutions.
She moved to Seattle, WA in 2013, after living abroad for eight years in Frankfurt, Germany, joining IA Interior Architects to build their Experiential Graphic Design practice. In a short five years, she grew a team and managed a wide range of international corporate interior/branded experience and signage and wayfinding projects.
Annelle is currently serving on the Society of Experience Graphic Design (SEGD) Board of Directors and is part of the Global Events Team at Amazon Web Services (AWS), leading the creative development and deployment of their third-party events program.
Adjunct Professor
Phan Tran is a designer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. He is currently an adjunct professor teaching design courses, Bachelor of Applied Science in Design (Bachelor of Technology Applied Design Program), and Design. He has taught classes in photography, smartphone filmmaking, digital fabrication, design thinking & process, mass communications, and 3D design and modeling for engineering. He is currently co-chair of the i3 Innovation Lab, LWTech’s makerspace, where he facilitates collaborative projects with students and faculty.
Phan’s professional experiences included working at Amazon.com as it transitioned from a startup to a publicly traded company where he mocked up an example of how product videos could eventually become an important part of a product’s page, freelance photography, and running a boutique production company in Los Angeles that was one of the pioneers of making 4K digital image acquisition the common and dominant format in the industry.
He is a local graduate of Juanita High School, received his BA in Philosophy from Seattle University and his MFA in Cinema and Television Production from the University of Southern California.
He was part of the last generation of students at USC to shoot on Black & White 16mm film. Even though he saw the potential and inevitability of digital cinema, Phan still owns an Aaton super 16mm camera package and an assortment of super 16mm, 16mm, Super 8, and 8mm Bolexes, Beaulieus, and Nizos. He is always future looking while also valuing our connections to the past.
Phan is interested in exploring design thinking & process and where it intersects with all design related fields, but currently is focused on its application in writing, screenwriting, and filmmaking.
Adjunct Professor
Ty Underwood is a game designer, industrial designer, UX designer, developer, artist, and activist. They have worked on a variety of projects, designing the wooden desktop workstation Volta V, developing design and UX for multiplayer user generated content platform Reworld, and working on the musical signal processing system Imitone. At LWTech, they teach courses in game design, interactive media, and graphic design.
Ty co-founded and runs Comradery, a cooperatively owned digital content platform for artists and activists. They have given talks and were an invited panelist at Games for Change, The Video Game Studies Scholarly Interest Group, and The South Seattle College Labor Conference. They were invited to speak on education at GDC 2020. Ty most enjoys working in a variety of cross-disciplinary media and learning new ways to create art with technology.
Business Hours
Mon-Fri, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Campus Hours
Mon-Thurs, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Friday, Closed to the public
Sat-Sun, Closed