BIOGRAPHY
Amara Aguilar is an assistant professor of multimedia at Pierce College in Los Angeles, Calif. She teaches multimedia storytelling, podcasting, online journalism, media design, and more.
Amara is also an Apple Certified Trainer for Final Cut Pro, and also recently launched her own media consulting and development company, Evolve Media.
Before coming to Pierce, she taught online journalism and design classes at Cal State Long Beach. In addition, she continues to freelance as a writer and a designer (for print and web) and is currently working on independent multimedia projects. She has written for the Los Angeles Times and was previously a designer and sports reporter for the Daily Pilot in Costa Mesa.
On a sidenote, Amara has also worked in public relations and advertising. Her previous work in promotions involved designing posters, advertisements, programs, fliers and more for Cerritos Colleges performing arts. She also helped produce news releases and features for the performing arts, and maintained several department web sites at the college.
Amara has her master's degree in communications from Cal State Fullerton, with an emphasis in new media. Her research in graduate school focused on blogging in journalism. She is currently writing a textbook about online journalism. In addition to teaching new media and design classes, Amara has also taught graphic design classes, as well as video and sound editing classes.
Amara is a member of the Society of Newspaper Design, Online News Association and Society of Professional Journalists.
She does media consulting and training for various professional media organizations, universities, colleges and high schools.
<< Locks for Lena
Produced for the Long Beach Press-Telegram and published online. Shot and edited by Amara Aguilar
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Below are several newspaper designs and posters that were published. I created these in Adobe InDesign and Photoshop.
aguilar_resume
Amara Aguilar
11719 Sunglow St., Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Ph: 562.413.3413 • E-mail: amara.aguilar_gmail.com
Web: www.amaraaguilar.com; www.evolvemediaonline.com
experience
Pierce College Assistant Professor of Multimedia
September 2008 to present
• Tenure track teaching position includes teaching 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 (www.evolvemediaonline.com) 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
News Media/Design quick course completed, Hands-on Flash Training • Society for News Design
Online courses completed, Multimedia Reporting: Covering Breaking News; Color in News Design;
Typography for News Design • Poynters News University
Course completed in Spring 2007, Television Production (using Final Cut Pro) • Cerritos College
skills
• Experienced print and web designer, proficient writing, editing and interviewing skills, familiar with AP Style, html knowledge, web design 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 IBM platforms (InDesign, Quark, Pagemaker, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Contribute, Fetch, iMovie, Quicktime, Garage Band, Soundslides, Audacity, HTML, Flash, Final Cut Pro, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, Windows, basic content management systems).
references available on request
amara.aguilar_gmail.com • 562.413.3413
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
