Student Work

My name is Dr. J. Anthony Sawgrass. I’ve been with Avila University since the year 2000 however, I didn’t join the full-time faculty until 2005. I started as an adjunct. I taught feature writing and journalistic things, all aimed at and associated with my career at the time. But I found it such a welcoming place that I decided to join full-time, and I became a professor of communication. I teach advertising and public relations.

And we must all understand that communication is vital to just about every career, every discipline that exists. If you can’t communicate it, nothing will happen.

The School of Visual Communication Arts is unique in the sense that we’re a portfolio-driven school. We don’t just show students what to do; we actually engage them in doing specific real-world projects. That’s very important because once you hit the job market or begin to establish a career, you’ve got to be able to show your work. So from day one our students are actively engaged in doing actual real-world projects.

We don’t just teach communication because there’s an art to communication and there’s a science to communication. We meld both of those into a curriculum that prepares students not just to get a job in the world, but to shape the environment the way they want it to be. That means we prepare them to make changes, we prepare them to create opportunities, and we prepare them to challenge the system and the way things are. We prepare our students to become citizens of the world. And we know that right now, digital is the energy of the world.