SIA is a week-long annual event featuring workshops led by faculty from diverse disciplines. These workshops introduce students to new areas of exploration and encourage reflective thinking on how skills and processes from various media and fields can inform their own practice. By participating in short workshops, students gain firsthand knowledge and experience in areas they may not encounter in their regular coursework. Through interdisciplinary engagement, SIA enriches student learning and broadens their perspectives.

Founded in 2022 by Mina Zarfsaz (Assistant Professor, Art), SIA has provided students with invaluable opportunities for creative and intellectual growth. This year, SIA is organized by Marisa Watanabe (Assistant Teaching Professor, Art) and Elizabeth Shores (¾ Time Faculty, Art), with support from the Institute of Innovative Media, Materials & Design (IMMaD) at Rowan.

Read more here.

We are excited to offer two IMMaD funding opportunities! Both awards are available for fall 2023 and spring 2024 semesters.

Note: In order to streamline CCCA funding initiatives, four funding opportunities are combined into one application. Complete information can be found on the Edelman CCCA Faculty & Staff Resources page. All you need to do is apply once, and we will consider you for all applicable awards. If you want priority for a specific award, you can designate that on the form.)

Apply here. 
Budget template available here.

Application deadlines:

1. Review of applications begins immediately.
2. Deadline for priority consideration is Friday, September 18 at 5:00 pm.
3. Final submission for consideration is Monday, October 2 at 5:00 pm.

Please direct any questions to immad@rowan.edu 

• IMMaD Transformation Award (up to $500) for a transformative curricular experience or project that involve the students in cross-disciplinary and collaborative activities related to media, materials and design through real-world application. 

This year’s theme is “time” with emphasis on exploring ideas such as memory, history, evolution, legacy, relativity, or transformation.

• IMMaD Creative Community Award (up to $300) for projects that emphasizes real-world application of media, materials and design to build bridges between Rowan communities.

This year’s theme is “exchange” with emphasis on exploring ideas such as connectivity, global vs. local, symbiosis, and more.

Available for fall 2023 and spring 2024 semesters. All CCCA students/teams are eligible to apply. 
Application Deadline: 

• Review of applications begins immediately.
• Deadline for priority consideration is Monday, October 2, 2023 at 5:00 pm. 
• After October 2, 2023, we accept rolling applications until funds are expended.

How to Apply: 

Submit application here.

Please direct any questions to immad@rowan.edu

• IMMaD Creative Community Award (up to $300) for projects that emphasize real-world application of media, materials and design to build bridges between Rowan communities. This year’s theme is “exchange” with emphasis on exploring ideas such as connectivity, global vs. local, symbiosis, and more.

Fold, Cut, Transform: Intro to Paper Engineering

WORKSHOP:

This hands-on workshop explores how fold-based formats can transform content into interactive, narrative-driven experiences. The session considers the practical and conceptual potential of folds in printed artifacts.

In Part I, participants will fold an origami tessellation illusion—a tactile warm-up that introduces the idea of paper as technology. This exercise invites reflection on how form shapes meaning: How does the structure of paper impact the way we read, experience, or interpret content? Can the fold itself enhance or disrupt readability—and how can designers leverage that?

In Part II, we shift from structure to authorship. Participants will use the flexagon—a four-panel, animated fold structure—as a canvas for storytelling. Whether interpreted as doors opening, panels turning, or tunneling inward, the flexagon offers built-in limitations that invite unexpected creative responses. Text, image, and fold work in tandem here, inviting participants to think about how format can reinforce narrative.

No prior folding experience needed—just curiosity and a willingness to play.

Kelli Anderson is an artist, designer, and paper engineer who uses interactive design to reveal the hidden potential of everyday objects. Her acclaimed works include This Book Is a Camera (a pop-up book that functions as a real camera) and This Book Is a Planetarium (which features working paper tools including a projector and musical instrument). Her upcoming book, Alphabet in Motion, explores the intersection of typography and technology. Kelli's work—spanning from viral paper inventions to design for MoMA and NPR—invites play, curiosity, and deeper engagement with the world around us. She has taught at NYU, Parsons, Pratt, and Cooper Union.

Westby Hall 105
April 30, 2025 
11 AM - 1:30 PM
RSVP by April 25th

Open to all faculty and students.

For questions contact:
zarfsaz@rowan.edu

Workshop Poster

Radically Innovating in the Face of an Unknowable Future 
A Workshop on Emerging with the New

A new world is emerging, packed full of radical and profound changes. COVID, war, global power struggles, expanding inequality, the environmental crisis with heat waves, shrinking rivers, more frequent storms, and potentially catastrophic changes to the ecosystems we all depend upon mean that we live in anything but a very stable moment. Within this current complex situation, the future is unknowable.

Additionally – when we work with radical forms of innovation, what will emerge is also outside of prediction.

BIG QUESTION:

Given these conjoined realities, the critical question today is how do we develop resilient strategies for meaningful innovation when neither the shape of these innovations nor the future can be truly known?

WORKSHOP:

This is a workshop designed specifically to introduce participants to a new approach and set of highly effective techniques for precisely these forms of emergent disruptive innovation.

This three-hour workshop is an immersive, hands-on, experiential deep dive exploring and developing new techniques to co-emerge with innovative futures rather than imagining we can plan and then execute into being what we demand of the future.

OUTCOME:

By the end of this workshop, participants will understand the why, the how, and the when of these unique techniques to begin to develop their own effective context-specific innovation ecosystem for disruptive change-making.

James Hall 3109
April 18, 2024 
2-5 pm
RSVP by April 12th

Open to all faculty and students.

For questions contact:
zarfsaz@rowan.edu

Workshop Poster

IMMaD aligns with Rowan University’s commitment to environmental sustainability, interdisciplinary research, and community engagement by connecting academic inquiry with lived, public experience. Through creative research, technological experimentation, and cross-sector collaboration, IMMaD supports students and faculty in addressing urgent social, ecological, and cultural challenges.

Founded in Fall 2020, IMMaD began as a platform for experimental pedagogy and student support. Its early initiatives included the Art Professional Development Fund, which awarded more than 25 students support for senior thesis exhibitions, as well as the launch of forward-thinking courses such as Smell Art, Participatory Public Art, The Business of Art, and Glass Arts & Heritage Landscapes. These courses emphasized hands-on inquiry, creative placemaking, entrepreneurial literacy, and public-facing engagement.

Beginning in 2022, IMMaD expanded into a research-driven incubator for interdisciplinary innovation. The IMMaD Transformation Award and IMMaD Creative Community Awards were introduced to support experimental faculty and student projects bridging art, science, sustainability, and technology.

The Symposium for Interdisciplinary Arts (SIA) was launched in 2022 and became an official IMMaD initiative in 2023. It has grown into one of Rowan’s largest cross-college creative initiatives, with participation increasing from 112 attendees in its inaugural year to 276 in 2024. SIA brings together students, faculty, and external collaborators to explore creative risk, non-evaluative learning models, and collaborative inquiry. It now functions as both a public program and an ongoing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research initiative examining interdisciplinary pedagogy.

IMMaD’s work increasingly operates at the intersection of environmental education, public art, and immersive systems. Recent collaborations include community-based environmental education projects in Camden, interdisciplinary climate initiatives, immersive installations, and hands-on workshops with invited scholars and practitioners such as Emergent Futures Lab (Innovation Workshop, 2024) and Kelli Anderson (Paper Engineering Workshop, 2025).

As IMMaD continues to evolve, it functions not only as a program but as an incubator for relational, systems-based creative research — bridging disciplines, supporting emerging practitioners, and building infrastructures for sustainable, community-centered innovation at Rowan and beyond.

IMMaD as a social incubator is more than a bound space. It encourages you to define the shape of it based on your goals.

When we refer to "space," we use it in its broadest sense, encompassing the physical, virtual, mental, intellectual, personal, institutional, educational, spectacular, and any other dimension that comes to mind and is relevant to this expansive space.

At Rowan, we are often at Westby 105, at times in the field, and most commonly dwelling the metaverse. To Connect and Collaborate email us at immad@rowan.edu and stay tuned for news, open calls and workshops.

Director: Assistant Professor Mina Zarfsaz (zarfsaz@rowan.edu)

go.rowan.edu/immad