Faculty & Staff
Faculty & Staff
Jack Alexander
Director of Live Sound Reinforcement
Jack Alexander started his career in audio in 1967 at the Office of Instructional Resources at the University of Illinois, working in TV and Film sound.
Subsequent to graduation from U of I in 1971 [B.A. TV/Speech-Theatre/History], Mr. Alexander began his work in live sound production and related consulting, which continues to this day.
He has mixed sound for over 3500 major artists, designated and supervised numerous large-scale installations all over North America, and functioned as consultant to several of the most celebrated loudspeaker designers in the industry. In addition, Mr. Alexander has served for several years as the Education Editor for Live Sound International, the leading journal of the live sound production industry.
He started as a part-time instructor at Columbia College Chicago in 1983, and began his full-time appointment in 1996. He designed and supervises the Live Sound Reinforcement Program in the Department of Audio Arts & Acoustics.
Dominique J. Chéenne, Ph.D.
Director of Acoustics
Dominique J. Chéenne holds a Brevet de Technicien Superieur from the University of Caen, France. He received a Masters degree and a Ph.D. - both in Electrical Engineering - from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the modeling of sound propagation over seating surfaces.
In 1979 he founded C & C Consultants, a consulting practice specializing in architectural acoustics and environmental noise control. Since its inception C & C Consultants has provided design services on hundreds of projects nationwide including individual residences, performing arts spaces, schools, offices, factories, churches, as well as local, state and Federal government facilities. Click here for more information on C & C Consultants.
In 1995, Dr. Chéenne joined the faculty of Columbia College Chicago. He is currently serving as a tenured member of the faculty in the Department of Audio Arts & Acoustics where he directs the Acoustics Program. His main research interests are in the application of computer models to architectural acoustics and to environmental noise control issues, and his research work is regularly presented in national and international refereed settings. He was the recipient of the College’s Distinguished Scholar Award for 2007-2009.
Dr. Chéenne is a member of the Audio Engineering Society and of the Acoustical Society of America.
Ronald Gresham
Faculty
Ronald Gresham received a BS in Speech-Communications from North Central College. He has more than 25 years of experience in audio as a recording/mixing engineer and sound designer. He has worked as an Audio Engineer for WGN-TV Channel 9, The Pax Network Channel 13 Chicago, The Chicago Bulls, The Orlando Magic, The Chicago Cubs, The Chicago White Sox, Fox Sport Net, ESPN, ABC Sports, The Illinois State Lottery, McDonalds, Coke, Allstate, Sears, Miller, Coors, Ford, Denny’s and many others.Mr. Gresham’s musical clients include R Kelly, Nine-Inch Nails, TLC, Boys2Men, Monica, Gladys Knight, Temptations, Too Short, Sty Stone, Styx, Juvenile and many, many others. Studios: Studio Chicago, CRC, Streeterville Recording Studios, The Hit Factory, Daddy House of Sound, DARP, The Record Planet, The Firestation, Chicago Trax, Commercial Paper Recording, Circle House Recording and Trans-Con Recording Studios. Mr. Gresham engineered and recorded Grammy winning projects for Gladys Knight and Pips and Boys2Men. He also won 2 Emmy’s in sports for WGN-TV Channel 9.
Doug Jones
Faculty
Doug Jones has worked in recording and small-room acoustics for more than twenty years, and still consults on such projects. He has earned a Master's degree from Columbia College Chicago, where he is Professor of Acoustics and the founding chairman of the Department of Audio Arts & Acoustics. There, he directs accredited Bachelor's-degree programs in recording, architectural acoustics, live-sound reinforcement, audio for visual media, and sound installation.
Mr. Jones is a member of the Acoustical Society of America and the Audio Engineering Society, where he is active in committee work. His publications have appeared in IEEE Proceedings and International Computer Music Proceedings, and he is an every-month columnist in Live Sound International magazine. In addition to his teaching duties at the College, he organizes advanced TEF workshops and other in-service technical training for the audio industry.
S. Benjamin Kanters
Associate Chairman
Benj Kanters came to Columbia College Chicago after twenty years in the audio and music industries as well as fourteen years as an instructor of audio at Northwestern University's Schools of Speech and Music. He is a former owner and chief managing engineer of Studiomedia Recording Company in Evanston. His experience includes: concert production in large and small venues; audio engineering for live, recorded, and broadcast media; advertising and public relations to both the professional and consumer audio markets; and developing and teaching courses in audio ranging from high school to graduate level. He has been a faculty member in the Department of Audio Arts & Acoustics since 1993. Mr. Kanters received a Bachelor of Science in Speech and a Master's Degree in Music Technology, both from Northwestern University.
Howard Sandroff
Sound Design/Audio Arts
Jesse Seay
Assistant Professor
Jesse Seay holds an MFA in Studio Art from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Media & Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her kinetic sound sculpture has shown at the Hyde Park Art Center, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Bridge Art Fair, and is on permanent display at the Chicago Children’s Museum. Jesse Seay comes to Columbia College from Chicago Public Radio, where she served as a host and producer for Vocalo.org.
Ben Sutherland
Assistant Professor
Ben Sutherland welcomes his return to the beautiful city of Chicago and the Department of Audio Arts & Acoustics, where he taught part-time during his graduate studies at the University of Chicago. He has also taught music and audio technology, as well as managed the audio technology facilities, at the University of Chicago, St. Lawrence University, and Lehigh University. In addition to teaching, Mr. Sutherland has maintained an active career in professional sound, including full-time positions as Associate Audio Coordinator at Lehigh University and, for the past two years, as Audio Preservation Engineer at Safe Sound Archive in Philadelphia.
Alongside his professional and academic accomplishments, Mr. Sutherland is first and foremost a composer and musician. His compositions reflect diverse musical interests, including classical and film, electroacoustic and experimental, and numerous popular, folk, and "underground" genres. His works for the concert hall have been performed by renowned ensembles including the Pacifica String Quartet, the Contemporary Chamber Players, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. He has conducted the premiere of several classical chamber works, and he is fluent in percussion, piano/ keyboard, guitar, bass, and voice, having performed solo and in various ensembles (both classical and beyond).
Mr. Sutherland earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Music Composition from the University of Chicago, with a minor field of study in Computer Music Research. He holds a B.A. in Music from Oberlin College/ Conservatory.
Ted Uzzle
Director of Contracting
Ted Uzzle installed and repaired commercial motion-picture equipment in the 1970s, and then founded a design consultancy in sound, acoustics, and cinema design. His projects include Toad Hall in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the performance center at Berklee College of Music in Boston and executive screening room at 20th Century Fox studios in Los Angeles. In 1980 he joined Altec Lansing Corp. as product manager for microphones and loudspeakers, and eventually became product director for electronic products as well. In these years he assisted in the designs of very large sound systems for the winter Olympics at Sarajevo and the summer Olympics at Barcelona.
After ten years at Altec he joined Intertec Publishing Co. as editor of Sound & Video Contractor magazine. After seven years there he joined the National Systems Contractors Association (a not-for-profit trade association) where he directed the development of technical training.
Mr. Uzzle is a member of the Acoustical Society, the S.M.P.T.E., and the British Kinematograph Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Scoiety in 1984 for his published research on radiation patterns from loudspeakers, the acoustical transmission of perforated cinema screens, and the theory of sound-system feedback. He is a certification examiner for the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association. He has written more than 350 published papers, articles, and anthology chapters, and several books.
Pantelis N. Vassilakis
Chairman
Pantelis Vassilakis earned a Post Doctoral Certificate in Auditory Science (2003) from the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA), Ph.D (2001) and M.A. (1997) degrees in Ethnomusicology, specializing in music cognition, acoustics, and aesthetics, also from UCLA, and a B.A. degree in Music Composition and Technology (1993) from Kingston University, Surrey, England. He has also completed course studies in Electrical Engineering at the National Polytechnic of Athens, Greece.
Dr. Vassilakis has composed for the English National Ballet and the London Chinese Orchestra, has sound designed for BBC Radio 3 and the London Greek Radio, is routinely hired to digitally restore and master commercial recordings, and has extensive experience as a live and studio musician, sound engineer, and producer.
Since 1997, he has been presenting at US national and international conferences, often as an invited speaker, publishing several abstracts, articles, and book chapters and serving as reviewer for publications that include the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, the Journal of Comparative Physiology, the Computer Music Journal, and Oxford University Press. His work has been cited by over forty research studies and his recently published signal analysis and processing tool is already being utilized in research labs around the world.
As an instructor, he has earned outstanding course evaluations and a US National Course Design Excellence finalist award (2007). Other recognitions include awards from the London Arts Board (1993), the National Training Council, UK (1994), and the Acoustical Society of America (1999 & 2001).
Dr. Vassilakis comes to Columbia College from DePaul University, Chicago, where he held a joint appointment at the School of Music, the Libraries, and the Department of Instructional Design and Development, making significant contributions to both university-wide and departmental initiatives.
His research interests include cross-cultural dissonance perception, signal analysis, otoacoustic emissions, sound localization, musical aesthetics, film music theory, and assessment driven collaborative learning.
Peter Zhang
Faculty
Peter Xinya Zhang joined Columbia College Chicago in August, 2006. His field is psychoacoustics, specifically sound localization. He received his degree of Bachelor of Science in physics from Peking University, P.R. China, and received his Ph.D. in physics from Michigan State University, USA. In his doctoral thesis, he investigated human binaural pitch effects to test various binaural models, and developed a new technique to simulate 3-D sound field for virtual reality with loudspeakers. He has published papers at the Journal of Acoustical Society of America, presented at various conferences, and served as chair in the session of psychological and physiological acoustics at the 4th joint conference of Acoustical Society of America and Acoustical Society of Japan.
Besides acoustics, Dr. Zhang is an opera tenor. He hosted performances in Chicago, Boston, East Lansing/MI, and Beijing/China. He started several organizations for cultural exchange, and gives seminars on Peking Opera and other Chinese art forms.
Dr. Zhang is a member of the Acoustical Society of America, and of the Audio Engineering Society.
Administrative Staff & Technical Support
Ben Bridgewater
Assistant Technician
Bio Forthcoming
Sonija Dewberry
Secretary
Sonija Dewberry is the secretary of the Audio Arts and Acoustics department. She attended the University of Illinois majoring in marketing and communications. She worked at Mount Sinai Hospital as the administrative assistant to the direction of Outpatient Services and managed six satellite clinics. She did public relations for the first managed care programs and did outreach in the Pilsen community. In addition, in her time there worked as a drug and alcoholic counselor for their inpatient program.She worked as the Assistant to the Dean of Students at the University of Chicago for sixteen years. Sonija implemented a mentoring program, which consisted of upperclassmen helping new students become acclimated to the university setting from high school. She chaired the graduation speaker committee, administered emergency student loans, supervising students for the New Students orientation, and collaborating with Dean of Transfer Credits for all university undergraduates.
In addition to her secretarial duties, Sonija also initiated and directs the tutoring program for Basic Audio System and Intro to Audio for the Department of Audio Arts & Acoustics.
Ron Elling
Operations Manager
Ron joined the Department in late July, 2008 as Operations Manager with responsibilities for budgeting, purchasing, process management and staff oversight.
He has previously served as the Director of IT Services at Triton College in River Grove; Assistant Director of Harper TECH at Harper College in Palatine; Associate Director of Social Science Research Computing at the University of Chicago; Executive Director of the Illinois Alliance for Aging; and Director of Program Development and Evaluation at the Chicago Department on Aging and Disability.
His educational background includes a Master of Science in Human Services Administration from Spertus College in Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and Philosophy from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Ron's interests outside of work include digital photography, vegetable gardening and extensive reading in quantum, nuclear and astro physics as well as relativity, cosmology and the history of science. Travel with his wife Christine primarily to national parks serve as the source for landscape photography and hiking.
Brett Johnson
Chief Engineer/Manager
Brett Johnson's long and varied career in professional sound includes engineering [and engineering management] for Zenith/dB Recording Studios. He also has done concert sound for the Grant Park Music Festival, Blues Fest, Jazz Fest, Gospel Fest, and more. His systems design and engineering has been used for the renovation of Buckingham Fountain, and other major projects. He has worked in film sound and broadcast audio, receiving the "Digital Broadcast Pioneer" award of the National Association of Broadcasters. His clients have included Computer Associates, Adidas Corp., the State of Illinois, the White House Office of Communications, Columbia Pictures, Fox Entertainment, and many, many more.
He has maintained an association with Columbia College Chicago for twenty years, however, where he is Manager and Chief Engineer of the Audio Arts & Acoustics Department. He is also a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers [and was recently Manager of the Chicago Section], the Society of Broadcast Engineers, and the National Association of Business and Educational Radio.
Tony Miccolis
Studio Coordinator
Tony Miccolis received a B.A. at Columbia College Chicago in Audio Arts and Acoustics, and another B.A. at Dominican University in Communications, with a minor in Music. He also attended the Art Institute of Chicago for one year in the Sound for Pictures Department. In addition to his role as Studio Manager, Mr. Miccolis serves as a part time faculty member in the Department of Audio Arts and Acoustics. He is also the Proprietor/Engineer of Edgewater Audio Labs, Chicago.
Ray Morales
AA&A Technician
Ray Morales is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago [1995]. He started working in the Audio Arts and Acoustics Department as an Assistant Studio Coordinator before moving into technical engineering and maintenance. He has also worked as a free lance audio engineer for several theaters in the Chicago area. Currently, Mr. Morales is engineering for the Chicago dance company Cerqua Rivera Art Experience, and the Ralph Wilder Orchestra.
Elliott K. Scott
Assistant to the Chair
Elliott Scott received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Television/Video Production from Columbia College Chicago in 2000. Mr. Scott has freelanced as a videographer, producer, and teaching artist for the Urban Missions Program and its community based partners including Duncan YMCA, Street-Level Youth Media, Gallery 37 and the Cambodian Association of Illinois. His accomplishments include his work as Video Instructor for the Cambodian Association Oral Histories/Killing Fields Museum Project and Executive Producer/Director for the live CAN-TV broadcast of Street-Level Youth Media’s 2000, 2001 as well 2002’s annual Block Party. Since 2003, Mr. Scott has worked as a teaching artist for Music Theater Workshop/West Pullman Park Youth Project. That same year he received his Masters of Art Degree in Arts Entertainment & Media Management from Columbia College Chicago. He also help develop several audio after-school and summer high-school service learning programs in collaboration with local community based organizations: Street-Level Youth Media, Young Chicago Authors, Free Street Theatre ACT Charter School, and Snow City Arts Foundation, employing many Columbia College audio students.
Currently, in addition to being Assistant to the Chair of the Department of Audio Arts & Acoustics, Mr. Scott is an adjunct faculty member of Columbia College Chicago’s Television and Social Science Departments, instructing three courses: Aesthetics and Storytelling, Culture, Race & Media and Black Portrayals in Television.
Robert Zilligen
AA&A Digital Systems Technician
Bio Forthcoming