Game Design Guest Artist/Designer for the Design + Make Summer Fellowship

The VCAM Maker Arts Space at Haverford College is currently seeking a qualified Game Design Guest Artist for its Design + Make Summer Fellowship program for Summer 2024. The Instructor will work with the VCAM Maker Arts Space’s Education and Programs Manager to create and implement a game design curriculum for four undergraduate students across eight weeks, currently set to take place June 1 through, 2024, and will conclude on July 31, 2024.

The responsibilities of the role include conducting two instructional sessions per week, facilitating two mentoring sessions, and engaging in periodic remote work. The ideal candidate should possess a pre-existing curriculum that can be adapted or demonstrate a willingness to develop a curriculum tailored to the needs of the fellowship.

The primary objective is to instruct four students in foundational game design techniques, enabling them to collaboratively or independently craft simple yet compelling video games. Students are expected to work largely autonomously, guided by ungraded assignments presented by the Game Design Guest Artist.

About the Design + Make Summer Fellowship Program

Haverford’s VCAM (Visual Culture, Arts, and Media) facility is a 24/7 creative hub for students, faculty, staff, and the wider community. The VCAM Maker Arts Space offers digital fabrication and traditional craft opportunities for students, staff, and faculty. Through coursework, workshops, and studio hours, the lab serves as a place of experimentation and collaboration with an emphasis in learning new technologies to empower participants to design, make, prototype, and build across the disciplines.

For the past four years the VCAM Maker Arts Space has hosted its Design + Make Summer Fellowship Program, an eight-week immersion for a focused group of four undergraduate students in design, prototyping, and digital fabrication in partnership with local community designers, artists, and other organizations. The goal of the program is to help students learn design and prototyping skills and to challenge them to fully realize their ideas.

In previous years, students have crafted furniture, designed outdoor playspaces, and built toys, among other projects. For Summer 2024, our focus will be video game design. The learning objectives and fellowship structure are intended to be collaboratively developed by the visiting Game Design Guest Artist and the Education and Programs Manager of the Maker Arts Space. The Education and Programs Manager also oversees the Design + Make Fellowship. As such, this position will require periodic planning meetings in advance of the June 1, 2024 start of the Fellowship Program. During the course of the eight week fellowship, we imagine the Guest Artist contributing 8-10 hours per week.

The Game Design Guest Artist will receive an honorarium of $5000 for their work on this project. To apply, email dwatson1 [at] haverford.edu your resume, cover letter, and an example of your work as a link or pdf that would be relevant to this position. Please discuss any relevant past teaching experience in higher education or other contexts.