Faculty Profile: Tara Knight
The Department of Critical Media Practices (DCMP) was founded in 2015 as part of The College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI). DCMP’s Faculty have rich, diverse backgrounds that provide students with a broad range of perspectives and create environments in which students can have multiple experiences to help prepare them for careers in the ever-changing digital universe.
Tara Knight is one of these accomplished professors. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the 2019 William R. Payden Award for Faculty Excellence. This award recognizes excellence in teaching and research and includes a $20,000 cash prize, as well as the opportunity to present a colloquium on effective teaching methods, which Professor Knight presented to the public on October 30, 2019.
Knight grew up in a small, rural town where most of the residents were below the poverty line. When she received the Payden award, her initial reaction was, “A deep sense of honor and gratitude.” She claimed that part of her success was due purely to luck, and that “People often talk about success as hard work, timing and luck.” Her unique and effective teaching styles played a major role in earning her the Award.
Having learned from years of trial and error, Knight understands that in the digital industry, you have to be able to adapt and that something you trained for can disappear before you even graduate. One of her methods includes having her students create grading criteria by walking them through what an actual ‘A’ deserving media paper looks like. Knight said, “When students are given the opportunity to build their credit, they understand it in a different way.” When teaching, Knight, “makes sure that students learn the kind of foundational concepts that will not change over time.”
In today’s world, there are so many creators making such an incredible variety of works, that it becomes difficult for anyone individual to stand out. Knight defines her brand as, “that person who does lots of different kinds of things.” In this industry, not having a distinct brand can be difficult, but she decided that her career challenge would become something that she could use to her advantage. This “provides [her] with new challenges and...makes [her] more nimble.”
Currently, Professor Knight is working with her colleague Adam Burgasser and graduate student Kevin Sweet on a project that, “uses virtual reality to teach us very basic physics principles.” One of the demos that they’ve created allows the audience to stargaze via virtual reality. During one part of the experience, the audience stares at the floor, and the sky drops down so the stars appear on the floor. Knight said, "There are stars below us right now. We don’t ever think of these basic physics principles of our universe in that way, as an embodied thing, and that has something to do with our location in space.”
The Department of Critical Media Practices wants to ensure that by the time students graduate, they can adapt to the changes that will appear as the world progresses. Knight said, “Over the course of your career, think about all those shifts and changes. I can’t train you for what doesn’t exist. However, DCMP does a really good job of providing a broad-based foundational knowledge of many different kinds of fields.”
Allison Avery is a freshman majoring in Strategic Communications. She is a work-study student with the Department of Critical Media Practices.