Rochester Institute of Technology

Susan Lakin is currently a Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the College of Art and Design.  She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and worked as a freelance photographer in Los Angeles, Sweden and Australia.  In addition to her commercial photography work, she owned and operated a professional retail photographic supply store in Burbank, CA.

Attracted to RIT’s strong photography and computer science departments, Susan accepted her teaching position shortly after completing an MFA in Art Studio with an emphasis in digital arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She works across disciplines in her academic and art practices, which led to her role as a Fellow in the School of Individualized Study, an RIT academic unit that provides flexible individualized education pathways.  Additionally, she serves on the RIT Center for Engaged Storycraft Steering Committee in the College of Liberal Arts, an interdisciplinary center working and playing with story-based creativity, research, and technical craft.

Susan’s artwork has received numerous awards and is part of the permanent collection at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and Photography Museum of Lishui, China.  She has produced multiple interactive transmedia projects exploring the intersections of music, art, and technology.  More recently, she is engaged with immersive technology and collaborates on community projects in the nonprofit sector.  She is a founding member and co-chair of the RIT Frameless Labs, a collective to advance research, innovation and artistic creation in fields of virtual and augmented reality.  She is chair of the 2020 annual Frameless Labs XR Symposium, an event and online journal for the community of VR/AR makers to encourage collaboration, growth of existing ventures and inspiration for new projects and technology.

David Schnuckel is an artist whose work thinks through glass, a writer who examines issues related to glass, and an educator who challenges students to find provocative solutions to conceptual problems by way of glass.

He holds a BA in Fine Arts from Anderson University and an MFA in Glass from the Rochester Institute of Technology. His work exhibits internationally and belongs in the permanent collections of the GlazenHuis in Lommel, Belgium, Glasmuseet Ebeltoft of Ebeltoft, Denmark, and the Museum of American Glass in Millville, New Jersey. Schnuckel has taught at Alfred University, the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, the Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Craft, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and The Studio of The Corning Museum of Glass. As a writer, he maintains a blog that examines elements of his making and teaching practice entitled David Schnuckel Uses His Words and is a regular contributor to GASnews, the newsletter of the Glass Art Society.

Schnuckel is Assistant Professor of Glass in the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.