Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2019: Genesee – Heather Jones

Ms. Jones is a Professor of Fine Arts at Genesee Community College. She has a BFA and NYS Art Teaching Certification from Alfred University and an MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. She was recently awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2015.  She is a co-founder of Good Nature Press LLC, a business that is focused on book packaging for educational publishers. Ms. Jones is the artist /owner of GlassFeather Studio, creating original artwork, illustrations and custom commissions.  As a mixed-media artist and illustrator, her work is exhibited Nationally in Galleries and online at Saatchi Art. She has a Designer Fashion Collection based on the patterns developed in her original artwork that is available online at Vida Studio.

Ms. Jones teaches both online and traditional art courses at Genesee Community College in the subjects of art history, design fundamentals, drawing, painting and photography.  She supervises the fine arts studio and art history courses at GCC and has worked extensively with Cengage Publishing to develop online Art History course templates for faculty to utilize with the goal of unifying curriculum among a diverse group of instructors. Ms. Jones has written educational articles and blogs about successful online teaching for Cengage publishing. She is a SUNY Assessment representative for the Art Department at Genesee Community College and has tracked the trends on GCC’s online art history courses. She is trained in online teaching through Quality Matters Certification and SUNY COIL. She has developed online courses for Art History, 2D Design and a Photography Study Abroad Hybrid course. She participates in SUNY COIL online collaborations annually. Recently, she taught a COIL Project: A Cultural Color Study with Jose Luis Gonzalez-Cabrero from Mexico.