Spotlight on Alumna Sarah Andyshak, Director of the Digital Learning Studio and Instructional Technologist at Willamette University

Shifting roles within the academic world, Art History alumna Sarah Andyshak (PhD ’15) took a new position as Director of the Digital Learning Studio and Instructional Technologist at Willamette University (Salem, OR) in November 2023. In this new role, she combines her background as an art history professor with her interests in technology, which she recently expanded by earning certifications in web and mobile development.

After completing her doctorate at Florida State in 2015, Sarah became the only art history professor at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (Belton, TX). Working as a generalist within the art department, she proposed, developed, and refined surveys and seminars, and took students on museum visits and study abroad trips. Sarah also loved serving as an advisor on many senior art student committees, helping students consider how their own work interacted with the larger art historical field.

Sarah left her teaching position in 2022 in order to move closer to family on the West Coast. She discovered that she enjoyed aspects of coding as she worked on a certification in web and mobile development.

At Willamette University’s Digital Learning Studio, Sarah supervises student workers, researches educational technologies, and consults with instructors to design assignments for creative class projects. Student workers at the Digital Learning Studio teach tutorials to fellow students on the technologies available to them at Willamette. These programs assist Willamette students with projects like video editing, podcast creation, infographic design, and exploration of virtual reality experiences. Sarah is currently collaborating with the University Archives to create a website that will showcase objects and stories associated with Willamette’s history.

As a PhD student at Florida State, Sarah had the opportunity to spend an academic year in London for a graduate assistantship at the FSU London Study Centre. She worked in the Study Centre’s administrative office and library, served as chaperone on undergraduate field trips, and had a fantastic time conducting research at the British Library and London’s many museums for her dissertation, “Christ and Exegesis: Visual Interpretation in the Moralized Bibles, Circa 1225-1235.” 

Sarah writes,

“I really appreciated how thoroughly the art history faculty prepared us for presentations prior to giving conference papers. I kept their advice on public speaking in mind when I started teaching, and when I started giving feedback on student presentations. I loved teaching art history, and I’m pleased that I still get to work with students in my new role at the Digital Learning Studio. I’m particularly enjoying the combination of research and the creative aspects of this job.”