Faculty Friday: Terry Dobson Empowers Students Through Inviting Spaces While Inspiring Creativity
Through every transformative experience in life, we gather an appreciation for knowing and loving others better, and confidently expressing our passion for becoming a part of Christ’s bigger picture. This is the lens through which Terry Dobson, MFA, sees design as collaborative opportunities to serve, and like every designer’s eye for creating something enticing and new, Dobson has an eye for creating an inviting and growthful space for his students.
During the first week of his sabbatical in spring 2019, the Dobson family adopted a six-year-old boy from South Korea. Exactly four months later while dropping him off at preschool, Dobson too was adopted by a parrot who flew down and landed on his shoulder. “When it chose me, I realized for the first time what it truly feels like to be one of God’s children,” Dobson added that this is how he learned he was a bird-person and after the pandemic his family adopted a new parrot, Igor. This bird changed Dobson’s life by accompanying him in his teaching on campus every day for the next two years and was just one example of how transformation has happened in the most unexpected of ways for him.
Originally from a small town in southeast England, Dobson always dreamed of America throughTV shows, toys, candy, pop music, and culture He first came to the U.S. at the end of his freshman year in college, to be a counselor at a summer camp in upstate New York. From there he landed an internship in Boston by cleverly packaging his portfolio as tiny tea-chests sent on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party noting that “The British are coming back!” He then earned a full scholarship to Yale, where he received his MFA in graphic design before he was recruited by Disney.
Impressed by a concept he created from his lifetime interest in the millennium, Disney Imagineering hired him as a theme park show designer where he worked for the next 2 decades. “Since story ideas are the currency of Hollywood, one great concept is all it takes to open the next door ” he said, as he recounted the wide variety of roles he stepped into during his tenure. His contributions to Disney included working on the Virtual Magic Kingdom: Disney’s first massively-multiplayer online game which allowed players to win virtual rewards from interaction within both the virtual park and the real Disneyland. Coming full circle back to the project that got him hired, Dobson was chosen as creative director to lead the team designing Epcot’s Millennium Village Pavilion, which was the centerpiece of the millennial celebrations at Walt Disney World. This 60,000 square foot attraction showcased more than 50 countries under one roof, all sharing their gifts to the world. This won Dobson and his team the coveted Thea award in the year 2000 for the best Themed Entertainment Attraction.
While working at Disney for 20 years greatly expanded Dobson’s opportunities as a designer, he and his wife longed for a better work/life balance that made room for their newfound faith together. When Dobson began teaching at Azusa Pacific University in 2012, his life changed through the fulfillment he found in helping his students to grow not just as designers, but as people, and most importantly as Christians.
“Everything I ever worked on at Disney has now disappeared because it was transient and ephemeral, whereas now that my product is the impact I have on people, which is eternal and everlasting.”
Dobson’s vision for the future of design at APU focuses on ways to extend the student learning experience by connecting the Bachelors in Design Studies to the new online Masters in User Experience Design. “The secret ingredient APU graduates are renowned for is also the most sought-after quality needed to be successful as a designer in the field of UXD—empathy,” he said.
Dobson is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and strives to quickly discern his students' different learning styles so they don’t feel alone navigating college. “I’m a big proponent of heuristic learning. I want students to discover or learn something for themselves, but what’s more important is that they don’t have to be or feel alone while doing it,” he said.
Dobson carries a profound passion for giving students a platform to share their work, and has curated more than a dozen professional gallery shows of student work in partnership with Christian nonprofits.
“At Disney I used design to entertain, inform, and persuade, but now I get to use design for good, to raise awareness for social issues, to uplift others, and share Christ’s message,” Dobson said.
When asked what advice he would share with aspiring Christian designers, Dobson recommends two things: serve locally and act on God’s calling. Dobson never would have rekindled his love for working with his hands had he not been a part of APU’s Mexico Outreach mission trips to Ensenada to build a church. Church-building quickly led to pinewood derby car-building, and today he has the best job as a Cubmaster for 150 families in San Marino. This served as another example of the providential hand behind his most important life transformations.
Dobson aims to continue making socially-interactive community spaces that are conducive to creativity here at APU, just as he did at Disney. He attributes his love of teaching not just to APU students, but also the physical classroom space he’s grateful to share in the Convergent Media Center (CMC) on West Campus. “We don’t need windows for a view, we need them because this is the transparency GenAlpha wants in their future work space,” he says. “When you see people having fun while learning and interacting inside together, you indeed remember the true intangible benefit of the in-person, on-campus college experience.”
Posted: February 9, 2024