Visiting Assistant Professor of Game Arts/Design (One-Year Appointment)

Visiting Assistant Professor of Game Arts/Design (One-Year Appointment)

Company:
Carnegie Mellon University

Job Location:
Pittsburgh, 15213

Category:
Digital Arts

Type:
Full-Time

Carnegie Mellon University: College of Fine Arts: Art

Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Description:

Visiting Assistant Professor of Game Arts/Design (One-Year Appointment)

School of Art, Carnegie Mellon University

The School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University invites applications for a one-year Visiting Assistant Professor in Game Arts/Design. We seek an artist-educator working with games and interactive media as expressive and critically engaged forms, whose practice engages contemporary cultural, technical, and artistic contexts.

This position contributes to a studio-based curriculum that treats games as sites of inquiry across art, design, and computation. The successful candidate will bring a research-driven, interdisciplinary approach to game-making and support students in developing original work through production, critique, and conceptual exploration.

Teaching Responsibilities

The Visiting Assistant Professor will teach two undergraduate studio courses per semester, typically spanning intermediate and advanced levels within the area of game arts and design. These courses emphasize games and interactive media as expressive, experimental, and critical forms, and may be adapted or developed in alignment with the candidate's areas of expertise and creative practice.

Teaching takes place within a studio-based, critique-driven environment integrating production, analysis, and discussion. Students engage game-making as a research-driven process, exploring systems, interaction, rules, play, narrative, space, and affect alongside perspectives from game studies, contemporary art, and media theory. Through iterative prototyping and project development, students create original playable works while refining conceptual and design approaches.

The successful candidate will be encouraged to shape course content and propose new offerings that extend the School's interdisciplinary curriculum, including areas such as experimental and independent game design, immersive worldbuilding, real-time interactive systems, narrative and emergent storytelling, and games within expanded media contexts.

Areas of Expertise

We welcome candidates whose work engages one or more of the following areas:

• Experimental and independent game design
• Games as artistic, critical, or research-based practice
• Systems design, interaction, and player experience
• Narrative, worldbuilding, and emergent forms of storytelling
• Real-time, interactive, or computational media
• Games within expanded contexts (installation, performance, networked or hybrid forms)

Candidates should demonstrate experience with an industry-standard game engine (e.g., Unity, Unreal) or comparable real-time development environment, as well as an ability to translate technical processes into accessible and conceptually grounded instruction.

Qualifications

• MFA or equivalent terminal degree in art, design, game development, or a related field
• Active creative practice in games or interactive media
• Teaching experience at the undergraduate or graduate level, with a demonstrated ability to support students.
• Ability to teach both technical and conceptual aspects of game-making within a studio and critique-based pedagogy
• Strong understanding of historical and contemporary contexts for games, art, and media

About the School of Art

The School of Art is one of five schools within Carnegie Mellon University's College of Fine Arts, alongside Architecture, Design, Drama, and Music. The School's curriculum integrates studio practice with critical theory and technology, and emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration across the university. Faculty and students engage with research centers and initiatives such as the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, IDeATE, and the Center for Arts in Society.

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