Office Address: 104 Lake Superior Hall
Phone: (616) 331-3633
Email: [email protected]

B.S., Business, Michigan State University
B.S., M.S., Communications, Grand Valley State University

Areas of Specialty: Editing and special effects, nonprofit and foundation filmmaking, documentary filmmaking, and the Adobe Creative Cloud.

Jim has been producing films since the early 1990’s. One of his first films, “An Interview with Lou Raynor”, resides in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Jim works in a variety of genres from non-profit and corporate to documentary and narrative features and shorts. His 2009 documentary “Up From the Bottoms: The Search for the American Dream” won five festival awards in 22 festivals and aired on PBS nationally from 2011 to 2014.  The documentary also aired on television in the UK and South Africa and is in every major university library in the United States.  Jim co-produced the narrative short “Moths” with Andy Fortenbacher, it was a semi-finalist for an Academy Award in the Short category. He has also collaborated with his mentor and friend Deanna Morse on several projects, one of them for Art Prize. Jim also teaches courses in special effects and editing, specializing in Adobe After Effects, Photoshop and Premiere. He was also a presenter at the 2013 Postapalooza Editing Conference where he taught several sessions on Adobe After Effects. Jim spends his free time volunteering in the community, golfing and playing with his two adorable granddaughters.

Office Location: 102 Lake Superior Hall
Phone: (616) 331-8175
Email: [email protected]

B.A., Hope College
M.Ed., Grand Valley State University
M.F.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Areas of Specialty: technology integration and pedagogy, interdisciplinary initiatives, High Impact Practices and collaboration

Sara Alsum-Wassenaar is a facilitator of visually-focused experience-based endeavors.  She uses hand-craft methods and interactive technology to inspire understanding of and change in the area of deep ecology.  Alsum-Wassenaar started Macatawa Strata which explores the various histories and ecologies of the Macatawa watershed.  One project within this focused on the decommissioned power plant site in Holland, MI.  ALong with a small team of GVSU students and community members she hosted two public events on the powerplant site where participants were invited to make a ceramic plate, gather data, draw a map, and layer a 120mm photograph. The plates were created by pressing clay on the site's infrastructure and then slumping the clay over a mold to form a plate.  The plates and other items were used to host a dinner for the Holland Planning Commission. Guests were asked to contemplate the past, present, and future of this contested real estate site. The dinner served as a celebration and critique of past and future land-use while thoughtfully looking tward the future.

This project and more can be viewed at www.macatawastrata.com and www.alsum-wassenaar.com