Get to know us

People and Culture

The Art and Design department at Cal State East Bay is a hub of talented students, staff, and faculty. Many of our students are trailblazers in their families, being the first to attend university or pursue a master's degree. Our university is strongly committed to social justice, diversity, and sustainability, and we work collaboratively to cultivate an encouraging and dynamic environment marked by camaraderie and support.

Our Students

MA IxDIA students are part of Cal State East Bay’s highly diverse, socially mobile academic community. Many come from working-class and first-generation backgrounds, shaping a studio culture centered on belonging, collaboration, and shared growth.

As a STEM-designated program, IxDIA prepares students for careers in interaction design, UX, and creative technology, with applied, project-based learning and strong faculty mentorship. International students benefit from STEM OPT eligibility, while all students gain access to career resources that support professional pathways beyond graduation.

Together, IxDIA students bring global perspectives, lived experience, and interdisciplinary thinking to design interactions and systems with real-world impact.

Our Faculty

MA IxDIA faculty are interdisciplinary designers, artists, researchers, and technologists whose work spans interaction design, creative technology, critical theory, human-centered design, and experimental media. Actively engaged in research and professional practice, they bring real-world insight, mentorship, and intellectual rigor into the studio, supporting students as they design complex interactions, systems, and experiences with social, cultural, and technological impact.

Ian Pollock, M.F.A.

Professor of Art and the Director of the Graduate Program.

Professor Pollock's creative and professional focus lies in transdisciplinary New Media art, interaction design for social justice and sustainability, creative use of public space, and collaboration in game jams, hackathons, playable media, neuroscience, computer science, and foresight and afro-futurism, as well as social capacity and social capital building.

Gwyan Rhabyt, M.F.A.

Professor of Art and

Professor Rhabyt teaches course in processing and screen based design.

Marina Terteryan, M.S.

Adjunct Professor of Art

Multi-disciplinary design leader and conscious entrepreneur that works at the intersection of service design, behavior science, education, and social justice. Focusing on creating human-centered business solutions and fostering a culture of empathy-driven innovation. Marina is passionate about using design to address social issues and create positive change in the world.

Jessica Santone, Ph.D.

Chair of the Art Department.
Associate Professor of Art History & Visual Studies

Professor Santone teaches on contemporary art and visual studies, primarily from North America with particular attention to the socio-cultural circumstances of the work's making and its reception. As a result, she's interested in a number of important interpretive lenses in relation to recent art practice, including: environmental humanities, feminist theory, critical race art history, phenomenology, and new materialism.

Kal Spelletich, M.F.A.

Adjunct Professor of Art

Kal Spelletich is an American contemporary artist. A pioneer of San Francisco's machine art scene, he hand builds complex machines and robots. Current work, in 2018, includes building functional artificial robotic organs as a residence of the Stochastic Labs in Berkeley California.

Tyler Stannard, M.F.A.

Adjunct Professor of Art

Tyler Stannard MFA in Digital Media Art at SJSU. His work has been presented at events and venues across the Bay Area, California. Currently his practice is centered around upcoming technologies through Video Game Design, Virtual environment building, and Mixed Reality, further advancing his practice and exploration with techno-illusionary devices.

About the Logo

The MA IxDIA logo is composed of two interlocking tesseracts, representing design practice beyond static 2D or 3D artifacts. Together, they symbolize the design of behaviors, systems, and interactions—work that unfolds across time, context, and human experience rather than existing as a single finished object.

The dual magenta and cyan forms reference an anaglyph, visually pushing the logo into an imagined three-dimensional space. This optical tension reinforces IxDIA’s core philosophy: designing for emergent interaction, perception, and meaning that exists beyond the screen or surface.

The logo embodies IxDIA’s commitment to multidimensional thinking, interdisciplinary practice, and human-centered systems design, where art, technology, and psychology intersect.

History

In 1996, we launched an interactive multimedia program that focused on art, design, business, and education. With a rich history of creating designs for user experience and interaction, our thesis projects are team-based and cover a wide range of interactive experiences, from interactive movies and education to mobile apps. For decades our program has been at the forefront of innovative and engaging art and design, continuously pushing against the boundaries of what is possible in interactive media.