Bringing vast professional experience with them to the classroom, two new faculty will be joining the School of Visual Communication in the Scripps College of Communication in July. Assistant Professor Catherine Penrod will be teaching User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI) in the multimedia sequence and Visiting Professional Terrance Reimer will be teaching both Photojournalism and Commercial Photography.
Penrod is a two-time Ohio University alumna (BSJ ’99 and MBA ’00). After graduating from OHIO, she began a career as an account executive for Cumulus Radio in Montgomery, AL where she created marketing plans that utilized radio advertising to help grow local, regional, and national businesses. After several years as an account executive, Penrod moved into the financial services industry where she worked both as a financial advisor and internal wholesaler.
In 2007, Penrod returned to Ohio University to begin her teaching career in the College of Business where she spent the next 17 years developing, teaching, and directing the business communication curriculum. She also served as the founding director for the Center for Professional Communication in the College of Business from 2009 to present and director of the Integrated Business Cluster from 2013 – 2021.
During her 17 years of teaching business communication, Penrod began to focus more on the role of visual communication in the creation of effective messages. She attended Ohio State University to receive a certificate in User Experience/User Interface design. Penrod is excited to bring her business background and passion for UX/UI to the School of Visual Communication.
Reimer is a new media visual artist exploring the integration of communicating experiential storytelling concepts and ideas using sound, video, and extended reality technologies. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in the multidisciplinary communication media arts program at Ohio University in 2020, studying documentary film and extended reality storytelling. His immersive VR thesis film, “Walking Past Abandoned Houses, I Think of Eric,” shares personal poetic testimony about the opioid epidemic in southeastern Ohio. The award-winning film was an official selection in the 2021 Fine Arts Film Festival at the Venice Institute of Contemporary Art in Venice, California.
Prior to his MFA studies, Reimer started his career as a photojournalist and since 1999, has been collaborating with many of the most renowned contemporary photographers of our time, creating fine art exhibition prints as a master digital printmaker. His photographic work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, and is included in the permanent collection of the Santa Barbara (CA) Museum of Art. He completed an artist-in-residence and served as a professor of photography at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin in 2003.