Hello, my name is Scott Macklin. I like to create stories through a process of deep hanging out and can usually be found looking for an espresso. My work focuses on developing narrative-based learning systems and comprehensive strategies to improve education and the ways we can reach and engage our students and constituents. My teaching and scholarship focus on developing critical career connected pathways. I currently serve as the Dean for the School of the Arts, Media + Culture and as the Executive Director of Global Online Learning at Trinity Western University. I hold a Ph.D. in Economics and Development Studies from Nelson Mandela University; MPhilF in Philosophical Aesthetics from the Institute for Christian Studies; and a BA degree in Communication from Vanguard University (Summa Cum Laude).
I hail from a family of preachers and teachers who taught me the importance of social responsibility, where education should be provided to all, regardless of culture, social status, or ability to pay. I continue to strive to this day to eliminate racial and identity inequity in my scholarly teaching and research practices and am committed to anti-racist work that moves toward systems that benefit us all. I can work, both inside an academic structure, as well as, within the community, giving back to others by sharing my talents in career connected learning, interactive media productions and design thinking.
Recognition
Scott Macklin received the Innovator Award for his work in driving Trinity Western University’s advancements in online and global learning.
Scott is awarded the King County Executive’s Award for Excellence in Community Service for utilizing narrative and social platforms as a powerful tool for engagement and producing impacts that matter.
Telly Award: Executive Producer for Media Space: Entertainment & Content.
EDUCAUSE Quarterly: Contribution of the Year Award and EDUCAUSE Award: Systemic Progress in Teaching and Learning
First Place Winner of Boys and Girls Club Pinewood Derby for Speed and Design.
Connected Learning Articles
Connected Learning Articles
Learning Matters Podcast
Selection of Web Stories
Designing Public Interest Technology
Summer Pilot
Creative Exchange Lab is a public research, education and exhibition initiative facilitating investment in the intersection of public art+public interest technology with open-source, collectively-owned research. In the Summer we ran a pilot program out of Pacific Science Center as well as other venues throughout the city: CoMotion Labs, The Grocery, Seattle Public Library and Yesler Terrace.
Integrative Learning and Innovation
I served as the Director of Integrative Learning and Innovation for the EarlyEdu Alliance at the University of Washington. I led the design and development efforts to build competency-based courses for the field of early childhood education. I supervised a team of subject matter experts; instructional designers; graphics designers; learning technology developers; and video, multimedia creators. These courses are distributed through the EarlyEdu Alliance which consists of 150+ Institutions of Higher Education reaching nearly 5,000 teaches and more than 50,000 children.
Courses Taught at UW
As Associate Director and faculty for the Communication Leadership graduate program at the University of Washington, I developed and taught a range of production-oriented courses on web development, social media, visual design and video/multimedia production. I managed efforts to create the program’s communication strategy, and led Community Partnership efforts supporting more than 100 clients in the business and nonprofit sectors.
- Com 593: Multimedia Storytelling: Emerging Platforms
- COM 592: Production Studio: Immersive Narratives
- COM 592: The Story Table: Re-imagining the Table as an Interactive Storytelling Tool
- CHID 498 Learning to Film, Filming to Learn
- EDUC 401 YouTube Goes to College: Documenting Excellent Teaching and Learning
"With all of his past accomplishments, the decision Scott made to join us full time in a leadership role at the Communication Leadership program says everything about him. He's a seeker and a storyteller, someone who does not rest easily on title, but is driven by a commitment to make better teachers and learners of us all through his unfailing service and remarkable ability to communicate."
– Hanson Hosein, Director, Communication Leadership graduate program at the University of Washington
As part of our outreach efforts, I served as the Executive Producer of Four Peaks TV – a monthly series that features interviews with leading media and technology visionaries.
Professional Development for Seattle Public School Teachers
"I also very excited to engage with Scott on our work with the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and Office of Economic Development on creating a plan and road-map to develop a Creative Economy / Interactive Media Skills Center focusing equally on the ‘supply side' (arts education and creative youth development) and the 'demand side' (workforce development and sector support) through a racial justice and equity lens. Scott’s methodology of convening through design and story-making has helped us realize connections that were not readily apparent and extend the capacity and impact our partnered work. Scott is a fantastically organized and engaging teacher for both students and adult learners, with a real passion and ability to support learners."
– Randy Engstrom – Director of Office of Arts & Culture | Seattle
Creative Advantage: Media Arts for All Classrooms
Developed in partnership with City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and Seattle Public Schools, I designed and led the instruction for the Media Arts for All Classrooms series. These professional development sessions are meant to build teachers capacities to integrate digital literacy into all content areas, providing skills and teaching strategies in film, design thinking, and podcasting.
"Scott Macklin partnered with MoPOP and Creative Advantage to design and implement a week-long Story-Media Residency program in four Japanese language learning classes at Garfield High School. Scott not only worked with nearly 100 highly diverse students but also mentored the teacher, her teaching assistant, the librarian and myself throughout the process in a parallel professional development opportunity to enhance all of our skills in media learning. Our goals are to give teaching tools and strategies to teachers to increase their joy in teaching and to meaningfully and effectively engage a wide range of students and their multiple learning styles. Scott is a total gift for the program and project."
– Bonnie Showers, Curator, Education and Interpretive Services Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP)
eLearning Design & Development
"Scott's visionary leadership of UWired, Catalyst, and PETTT had been lauded by many, on our campus and beyond. UWired fundamentally and permanently altered the culture of education at the UW and the results have been astounding. Scott is reticent to speak about his accomplishments, but as Benjamin Franklin said, "Well done is better than well said." What he brings to his work goes far beyond what is required and expected. Scott is magnanimous with his expertise, generous with his knowledge, unbridled and energetic, inclusive in word and deed, and resilient (a quality much in demand during these times.)"
– Lizabeth (Betsy) Wilson – Dean of University Libraries, UW
As the Director of the Program for the Educational Transformation through Technology (PETTT), I led a team of faculty, instructional designers and technology developers throughout the UW campus to develop learning technologies and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. The article that I wrote documenting our strategy won the EDUCAUSE Quarterly contribution of the Year Award The Catalyst Project: Supporting Faculty Uses of the Web ... with the Web. And the UWired initiative won the EDUCAUSE Teacher and Learning Award. The award honored replicable, sustainable, technology-based programs and practices that have helped move institutions or systems toward effective, enterprise-wide, learner-centered instructional systems.
International Teaching Projects
Content, Action and Any Screen Guadalajara, Mexico
I designed, developed and delivered an intensive 40-hour session for faculty at the Tecnológico de Monterrey. Through the Digital Creative City Initiative, the goal was to prepare their faculty and to help them re-imagine their curriculum and shift their scholarly practice through an infusion and coupling of new content creation, communication, and social media strategies with their existing engineering and entrepreneurship concentrations.
“The workshops Content & Action and Anyscreen Agency showed me things I knew, in a different way. I loved the re-framing of digital storytelling in the Mexican context, and the flexibility to adapt to everyone´s project. But the most important thing was the constant reminding of the need to articulate this kind of efforts with our own community. In that sense, I think Scott did a great job, even though he doesn't experience everyday life in our institution. His approach was respectful, clear and passionate. That was the difference."
– Professor Dr. Diego Zavala Scherer, Tecnológico de Monterrey
Obumu Media Lab in Kampala, Uganda
Working in partnership with the Bavubuka Foundation and ten community-based organizations in Kampala, Uganda, the Obuma Media Lab provides immersive learning experiences for youth so that they can then serve as embedded storytellers in their “home” organization. Students learned all aspects of production and how to create an effective engagement strategy.
"The power and influence of the first of its kind historical indigenous media lab led by professor Scott Macklin instigated a generational awakening of OBUMU (a luganda word meaning unity). This spirit continues to reconnect and activate young African visionaries in Uganda to expand their visions and shared passion based on the power of learning how to tell their authentic truth through the art of storytelling media platforms.”
– Silas Babaluku, Founder and CEO of Bavubuka Allstarz Foundation, Uganda
Building Each Other in South Africa
“What a breath of fresh air! Scott and Angelica Macklin's remarkable film strips off the perilously thin veneer of the so-called post-apartheid 'miracle' to reveal not only immense social degradation of black townships, in many ways untouched by shifts in political power since 1994; but it also shows a new generation of courageous young voices fighting back against the ‘internalization of hopelessness’, reclaiming social spaces and indeed memory, in telling their own stories of hope, solidarity, and social emancipation with such breathtaking eloquence. It would be hard not to be both moved and disturbed by this film'.”
– Derrick Schwartz, Vice-Chancellor, Nelson Mandela University
Extended Learning Opportunities
Sounds Beyond Barriers
Six teaching artists from Seattle & LA had the privilege of spending a week at the King County Juvenile Detention Center in Seattle with an amazing group of youth. Together they wrote three songs utilizing a collective songwriting process developed by Mayan indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico and Chican@ artivistas in East LA.
"Not only does Scott demonstrate extensive production skills documenting stories and testimonies that might not otherwise see the light, what I find to be equally important or maybe even more so, is the way Scott works with youth and the surrounding community to learn and engage in the production process. Whereby he enables a critical skill base that exists well beyond his work with the community and the students he engages. Scott is in my opinion an innovative instructor, artist and creative visionary who has found ways to bridge varying fields of discussion in order to nurture innovative thinkers for our collective futures."
– Martha Gonzalez, PhD, Assistant Professor at Scripps/Claremont College
Youth Based Media Making
“With Scott’s help and expertise, our Black Student Union was able to creatively and powerfully pull together the community’s voice on key issues of race in our school community. This work will ripple out to keep the conversation going – of breaking down stereotypes and undoing racism – in our school and outward.”
– Paul Fischburg, Faculty at Chief Sealth High School
Participatory Art and Community Development
Seattle Fandango Project
What is Fandango / Que es el Fandango
Fandango jarocho is a four-hundred-year-old tradition from Veracruz, Mexico born from the encounter between European, Indigenous, African, and Arab cultures. After being canonized by the Mexican government, El Nuevo Movimiento Jaranero reclaimed the musical celebration of fandango in the 1970’s as a space for community transformation and empowerment. Over the last twenty years, Chicano and Mexican communities in the U.S. have engaged with communities in Veracruz to use fandango as a technology for community building and social justice that transcends national borders.
The Seattle Fandango Project joins this movement by using the fandango to build and transform community. As a technology (in the analog), fandango contains protocols within dance, music, verse, and participation that provide new channels of communication, connection, and understanding. People find themselves through musical interaction with others, and both individually and communally realize new possibilities and ways of being. This is convivencia, to convene and coexist. Once people leave fandango, this new sense of self carries over to other parts of their lives.
Social Technology Impact
Let’s Have Dinner and Talk about Death
Serving as lead faculty and design consultant, I partnered with Michael Hebb to develop Death over Dinner – an interactive web resource that encourages people to host dinners for family and friends to discuss end-of-life issues. How we want to die – represents the most important and costly conversation America isn’t having. This engaging website is intended to create a new national conversation.
Working with Indigenous Communities
"I truly appreciate not only the skill that Scott brings to his craft but the care and dedication he brings to communities and the importance of relationship building. I especially appreciate his support of Indigenous women media makers. His films are both insightful and sensitive. But it is his dedication and way of working with communities and the way that he utilizes the filming process as a teaching and learning capacity building opportunity where he truly makes a positive impact."
– Denny Hurtado, Former Chairman of the Skokomish Tribe and Former Indian Education Director Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Washington
Racial Equity & Social Justice
The past summer has been beset with a series of traumatic and dramatic events that has shaken the very core of our humanity and put us on a pathway towards cultural confusion and a paralyzing skepticism. Questions such as – "What do we care about? Where do we stand and with whom? When is it necessary to step back? Whose interests are being served through our actions?" – are creating a transitional environment where a re-evaluation of one’s inherited values is at hand.
During this transition, communication, creativity, and collaboration become key, both at a personal and collective level. Individuals, as well as organizations, must shift to a collective growth and learning mindset if they are to become agile enough to simultaneously pursue social responsiveness and maintain organizational integrity.
In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck states, “Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way. When people…change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support.”
The ability to move to a growth mindset is rooted in story. Story creates the opportunity to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Through listening and entering into another's story one has the opportunity to experience a realm beyond their own particular world-and-life lens, and thus develop eyes that may see and ears that may hear in new ways.
The hope is that we begin to think of story as a means to open up the realm of the possible, a way to transform our world-and-life views. Central to this transitional work is the notion of storytelling where stories are forged in the process of deep hanging out – where a story is made in collaboration with a community of practice, where one engages in the act of making a story "with" people from a particular community not just "about" them.
What follows are some recent examples of stories that I have had on the honor to produce. These examples are meant to serve as a demonstration of my commitment to listen actively in order to develop repertoires of collective action.
"I would like to call to your attention the fact that Scott has a presence in the community. Whether it is his convening with community leaders or the education through narrative work that he does with teachers and students, Scott has a deep commitment to actively engage through listening first and then responding in ways that move to action. I am fond of his notion of creating and developing stories “with” communities and not just “about” them. Though Scott tends to stay behind the scenes, I want to call out his work to you as someone who represents the best of what UW can be through not only his words but his actions. On another note, when I offered him some of the settlement, he quickly responded by wanting those funds to be channeled to a scholarship that I am creating for a Black Lives Matter scholar activists. He talked about wanting to continue working with teachers and students to build their capacity to develop stories that truly matter. As a public school teacher I deeply value Scott's commitment to supporting youth and the broader community."
-Jesse Hagopian, Teacher, Black Student Union advisor, Garfield High School
Awards
- King County Executive’s Award for Excellence in Community Service – “Utilizing narrative and social platforms as powerful tools for engagement and producing impacts that matter.”
- EDUCAUSE Quarterly contribution of the Year Award – "The Catalyst Project: Supporting Faculty Uses of the Web ... with the Web."
- Telly Award – Honoring excellence in video and television across all screens – “Media Space: Entertainment and Content”
- Exchanges Connect Award – U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs – "My Culture + Your Culture"
Volunteer Activity
- Advisory Board of the Seattle Interactive Conference
- City of Seattle’s Music and Art Commission Community and Youth Development committee
- Seattle Next 50 - Chair Sister Neighborhoods - Civic Action Committee
- Curator TEDx Seattle
- UW Faculty Committee on University Relations
- UW Leadership, Community and Values Initiative
- University of Washington Presidential Staff Forum
- Chair of the EDUCAUSE Systemic Progress in Teaching and Learning Award Committee
- VP of Education for the Society of Information Management Executive Board
Education & Credentials
Ph.D. Candidate, Economics and Development Studies, Completion NELSON MANDELA UNIVERSITY, Port Elizabeth, South Africa Dissertation in Progress: "Career Pathway and Workforce Development in Culture and Creative Industries"
M. Phil. F. in Philosophical Aesthetics INSTITUTE FOR CHRISTIAN STUDIES, Toronto, Canada
Bachelor of Arts in Communication, Summa Cum Laude VANGUARD UNIVERSITY, Costa Mesa, California
Articles & Book Chapters
- Macklin, S., (2011). Convening Community through Story. ARCADE - Dialogue on Design, Volume 30 (1): 36-38.
- Macklin, S. (2003). Technology in Developing Web-Based Instruction: Planning, Designing, Managing, and Evaluating for Results, edited by Elizabeth A. Dupuis. New York, New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers
- Macklin, S., Lewis, T. (2002). Faculty Voices and Educational Technology: Shaping Effective Student-Centered Learning. Paper for the American Association of Colleges and Universities Conference, Washington DC. January 23-26.
- Macklin, S., Donovan, M. (2000). The Catalyst Project: Supporting Faculty Uses of Web…with the Web in E-Learning: Expanding the Training Classroom through Technology, edited by Lynne Mealy, Austin, Texas: Rectro Duncan and Associates, Inc.
- Macklin, S. (2001). Interfacing: Perspectives on Teaching and Learning with Technology. Paper for the Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching and Learning Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota. March 26-April 6.
- Macklin, S., Lewis, T., Alway, M., (2000). A Catalyst for Collaboration: Supporting Technology in Teaching through Partnerships. Paper for the EDUCAUSE Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. October 10-13.
- Macklin, S., Donovan, M., (1999). The Catalyst Project: Supporting Faculty Uses of Web…with the Web. CAUSE/EFFECT, Volume 22 (3): 18-26.
- Macklin, S., Donovan, M., (1999). New Learning Technologies: One Size Doesn’t Fit All. Planning for Higher Education, Volume 28 (1) 10-19.
Blog Posts
• Can virtual reality transform your reality? in Crosscut
• Reality blooms in the Creative Exchange Lab in CityArts
• Summer of Transitions: Stories that Matter
• Scott Macklin’s “Top Left” documentary featured in “The Legacy of Seattle Hip-Hop” MOHAI exhibit
• Hack-a-thon meets design to tackle ocean climate change communication strategies
• “Hacking” Homelessness at Seattle Interactive’s Design Swarm
• Building a Foundation for the Story Co-Op Experience
• Inside COM 583: Multimedia Storytelling with Scott Macklin
• Interactive Film festival panel features Comm Lead’s Scott Macklin
• Immersive Storytelling: Moving from Transmission to Transaction
• Discovering Obumu through Hip-Hop: Scott Macklin Teach Media Skills Workshop in Uganda and Beyond
• Death Over Dinner Convenes as Hundreds of Americans Coordinate End of Life Discussions Across U.S.
• Charettes: Jump on This Cart with Your Transmedia Story
• Scott Macklin does ‘deep hanging out’ with Fandango Movement
• MCDM Associate Director receives award for community service in the realm of hip-hop
• A Story to Tell: Community Centric Storytelling for Nonprofits in the Digital Age