Department of Art

Ani Avanian

BFA, Drawing and New Media, University of Toledo '06 - MFA Tufts University in conjunction with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, '11

Ani is currently Product Design Manager at Facebook, where she is part of the Developer Platform team, which empowers developers and businesses around the world to build for the future.  After graduation she worked as a web designer at the Center for Creative Education at UT, where she received further training in the field of web and user experience design. Her work has been featured in Mashable, TechCrunch, USA Today, Time Magazine, Forbes, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Thrillist, Boston Magazine, Improper Bostonian.

Laura B. Gibson Rimer

BFA, Digital Media, Drawing and Biology, University of Toledo '02 - MS University of Illinois, Biomedical Visualization, '04

Laura is an experienced Digital Project Manager, Instructional Designer, eLearning Developer - Education and Healthcare – She currently works for the Department of City-wide Administration Services, NYC, and is a former Director of 3D Production at the Department of Scientific Visualization at The Visual MD, New York.

Kevin Hatch

BA, Art History, University of Toledo, '99
MA, University of Delaware and PhD, Princeton University '11
Assistant Professor of Art History and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Binghamton University SUNY. His teaching and research traverses the twentieth century, with particular attention paid to the intersections of art, cinema, and new media in the postwar period. His book Looking for Bruce Conner investigates Conner’s influential but insufficiently understood work while exploring the artist’s position on the geographical, cultural, and critical margins.

Morgan Hayward

BFA, New Media, University of Toledo, '13 and MEd, University of Toledo '17

Morgan is a Multimedia Designer for the University of Michigan Medical School's Office of Research. She is a former Media Design and Animation Specialist in the creation of full-dome digital animations for UT's Ritter Planetarium, Toledo, OH.

As the Multimedia Designer for the University of Michigan Medical School Office of Research, she works within the marketing department, creating digital graphics and communications directly supporting biomedical researchers across the Medical School.

Michael Tavel

BA Sculpture and BS Interdepartmental Studies '85 University of Toledo, Master of Architecture, UC, Berkeley, '89.

Michael Tavel AIA, of SUN Studio in Denver, is a nationally recognized designer of sustainable urban neighborhoods and architecture. Michael was the Outstanding Alumnus for the College of Communication and the Arts at UT in 2015. His firm’s work emphasizes passive design strategies within urban development patterns to reduce resource demands, and how urban architecture can be designed to best support a culture of sustainability.

Chad Rimer

BFA, Sculpture, University of Toledo, '03.


Chad is Studio Manager for sculptor Tom Otterness, New York, NY. Born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, Chad Rimer worked for nine years in the industrial fabrication field during high school summers and while in college. After graduating in 2003 with a BFA in sculpture and a minor in metalsmithing from The University of Toledo, Chad now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.