Resume

Amara Aguilar

Los Angeles, CA

experience

University of Southern California Associate Professor of Professional Practice, Digital Journalism

• August 2014 to present

Position includes teaching digital journalism courses; working with students and faculty to foster digital culture; community outreach; development of curriculum; etc.

Saddleback College Journalism Dept. Chair & Assistant Professor of Journalism

• August 2012 to August 2014

Full-time tenure track teaching position includes advising student publications, teaching journalism courses, developing curriculum, building and expanding the journalism program.

Pierce College Assistant Professor of Multimedia

September 2008 to August 2012

• Earned tenure and taught multimedia, journalism, radio, and broadcasting courses; development of curriculum; establishing degrees and certificates; developed an internet radio station; advising student publications; developing department policies, contributing to devlopment and implementation of vision of the Media Arts Department.

Evolve Media owner and producer

January 2009 to present

• Evolve Media is a company I founded that provides inspiration, creative opportunities, and facilitates training and education related to media, communication, storytelling and technology. We produce video content, Web designs, photography and interactives for clients. Our mission is to create, inspire and help communities evolve with technology and changing forms of communication.

Cal State Long Beach Journalism Lecturer

October 2005 to August 2008

• Classes taught include Online Journalism, Writing for the Web, Media Design, Writing Across the Media, Reporting and Information Gathering. Duties include developing course content, lecturing, grading, etc. Also advising the online editions of the Daily 49er and Dig Magazine.

Cerritos College Journalism Instructor

Fall 2005 to present

• Hired to teach Intro to Multimedia Reporting, talonmarks.com, Beginning News Writing, and advise the student magazine Wings. Wings was honored in 2007 with a state general excellence award by the Journalism Association of Community Colleges. Duties for Cerritos College also include advising, developing course content, teaching fundamentals of magazine writing and design, lecturing on other various topics, grading, etc. Also serving on vocational advisory board for the journalism program, and contributing to curriculum development.

Cerritos College Performing Arts Promotions

May 2004 to February 2006

• Duties included performing all publicity for music and theatre events. This entailed composing press releases and feature stories for local media. In addition, duties included creating brochures, monitoring budget, as well as researching and developing audience base. Also responsible for designing advertisements, posters, postcards, programs and all other print and online publicity materials. Responsibilities consisted of maintaining theatre and music web sites, including content development. Also responsible for ticket sales and as a new feature made tickets available for purchase online.

Cerritos College Journalism Aide/Ad Mgr

March 2002 to May 2004

• Duties included instructing Cerritos College journalism students in the departments open lab on use of computer design software such as InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. I also taught students how to use digital cameras and video cameras, and provided input on journalism curriculum and yearly goals. In addition, I was responsible for selling and billing of ads, designing ads and interacting with clients. I also assisted in training students on how to maintain and utilize the college newspaper web site (www.talonmarks.com), voted one of the top online student newspapers in the state by the Journalism Association of Community Colleges.

Cerritos College Community Ed Instructor

Summer 2003 to 2007 (Summers only)

• Classes taught include How to Make a Newspaper, Intro to iMovie, Intro to Digital Music and Photo Albums, and Graphic Design with InDesign. Job entails developing syllabus and lecture material as well as instructing students on InDesign, Photoshop, iMovie, Garage Band and iPhoto. In previous newspaper class sessions, the students created a minimum 8-page tabloid newspaper, The Falconer, in two weeks.

LA Times Community News, Designer/Writer

January 2000 to March 2002

• Duties included planning and designing A1 cover pages and sports pages for the Daily Pilot, a daily community newspaper with 40,000 circulation that covers Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. Also was responsible for some copy editing, writing headlines, decks and captions as well as proofing pages. Job also required writing features and game stories. I was the college beat writer for the Daily Pilot and had a column that ran once a week. Beat included covering UC Irvine athletics. Job also entailed creating sports cover designs and graphics using Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop. In my first assignment as a designer, I was responsible for designing the Westside Weekly, a regional supplement to the Los Angeles Times. Job involved planning and designing the entire publication by working with photographers, photo editors, reporters, city editors and copy editors. Job also entailed creating Page 1 designs, graphics and logos using Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop.

The Hockey Players Corp. Content Publisher

January 2001 to August 2001

• Team beat writer for the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. Duties included compiling stories as well as writing columns for www.worldhockeynet.com, a web site supported by The Hockey Players Corp., based in Canada. The web site was discontinued due to the slowing economy and cutbacks.

Los Angeles Times (OC) Sports Stringer

August 1997 to September 2000

• Duties included covering high school and some college sports events as well as working on the sports desk (taking calls, inputting agate and writing game summaries). Also freelanced for OC Calendar Weekend section.

Montebello Our Times Intern Reporter

June 1999 to August 1999

• Duties included writing local news, feature and sports stories for Our Times, a weekly community newspaper distributed regionally with the LA Times.

education

Masters Degree, Communications (Journalism/New Media) • Cal State Fullerton

Bachelors Degree, Communications (Journalism) • CSUF

Apple Certified Trainer, Final Cut Pro

Associate in Arts Degree, Journalism • Cerritos College

Certificate, Graphic Design • Cal State Long Beach

Certificate, HTML • North Orange County Community College District

skills

• Experienced social media and audience engagement producer, mobile, tablet, print and web designer, proficient writing, editing and interviewing skills, familiar with AP Style, UX design, html knowledge, web design skills, 360 photo and video skills, photo and digital imaging skills, copy editing skills, online reporting skills, podcasting skills, blogging, multimedia skills, video editing, sound editing, videography, computer literate on Macintosh and PC platforms (Premiere, After Effects, Muse, InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Digital Publishing Suite, Dreamweaver, Audacity, ProTools, HTML/CSS, Final Cut Pro, Final Cut X, WordPress, content management systems.

references available on request

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