Select Academy faculty, with a highlight on technology
Michael Crowley
Professor, Dir Online Programs

Michael Crowley is the director of Online Programs and a professor of teaching (technology) at the USC Iovine and Young Academy. He oversees operations of the online Master of Science of Integrated Design, Business and Technology program. He teaches multiple classes in the graduate program, as well as an undergraduate Academy course that focuses on materials in design.

Crowley has worked for 20 years in the industry as a programmer, manager and project manager at Northrup Grumman. He came to the University of Southern California in 1999 as a full-time lecturer with the department of Computer Science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Thereafter, Crowley shifted emphasis to become the director of Information Technology Program (ITP), a cutting-edge, hands-on program that offers courses in web development, new media, 3D animation, security, programming, video game design and programming, and other innovative topics in information technology.

Patrick Dent
Assoc Professor, Asst Dean

Patrick Dent is the Assistant Dean of Curriculum, and an Associate Professor, at the USC Iovine and Young Academy. He previously taught for 15 years in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, where he was the Associate Director of Technology for the Information Technology Program.

Prof Dent has taught New Media, Web development, database and programming courses at the University of Southern California since 1998. He has developed courses, degrees and curriculum, at the graduate and undergrad level, across three different Schools at USC. His background beyond teaching includes working in graphic and web design, database and information systems, and as a newspaper reporter and magazine writer.

Prof Dent has more than 20 years of professional development experience, in disciplines ranging from programming and scripting to database systems and administration to web design and publishing. He continues to be an active professional developer, as well as maintaining professional contacts for faculty recruitment, student opportunities and in-class industry involvement.

Trina Gregory
Senior Lecturer

Since August 2009 Trina has been a full-time faculty member of the ITP department in the Viterbi School of Engineering. And she loves her job!

After getting a degree in Mathematics-Computer Science from UCSD, Trina Gregory worked full-time in the computer science field for over 10 years and enjoyed my career immensely. After having the first of my two boys in 2003, her family moved from San Diego to Los Angeles and I took time off to be a mom. She worked part-time for SAIC from March 2004 until June 2005. In January 2007, she started teaching part-time for the Information Technology Program at USC and rediscovered my love of teaching.

Her husband Jason Gregory is a lead programmer at Naughty Dog developing engine and gameplay software for PS3 video games. He has worked on several successful games including Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. He has also taught courses in game technology at USC.

A person Trina would really like to meet is Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web.

Robert Parke
Senior Lecturer

Rob Parke is a senior lecturer at the University of Southern California with joint appointments in the Information Technology Program in the Viterbi School of Engineering as well as the Iovine / Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.

He created an Android development course for the Mobile App Development minor, serves as lead faculty for the introductory Python programming course, and recently established the Connected Devices and Making minor to teach non-engineering students to create internet-enabled, hardware devices. He has previously taught Web Design, Introduction to Information Technology, Java Programming, C++ programming, and Photoshop.

Rob is also actively involved in senate governance at USC in roles that address issues of inclusion and equity, having served as co-chair of both the Academic Senate Campus Climate Committee and the Community Advisory Board. Outside of academia, Rob has a lifelong love of technology from the technical to the creative, with professional experience in software development, information technology, web design, audio engineering, film / tv post-production, and digital media.

Aaron Siegel
Assistant Professor

Aaron Siegel is a transdisciplinarian with a concentration in computational information design. He received his BFA in Digital Media Art from the Cadre Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University in 2006, and his MFA in Design|Media Art from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008.

His motivation comes from interesting data sets, interfaces and public spaces. He utilizes data visualization as a medium to explore complex systems, aiming to create aesthetic representations of data while fostering scientific empiricism. His work strives to display relationships and correlations within information systems that would remain unseen from any other perspective.

He has created work for various institutions including the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Electroland, Directed Play, the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory, Facebook and Fabrica. He has exhibited work in Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Reno, Memphis, Indianapolis, Seattle, New York, Guadalajara, Madrid, Trieste, Heidelberg, Singapore and Rome.