Yvonne Houy is the learning technologist for the UNLV College of Fine Arts – supporting faculty in Architecture, Art, Entertainment Engineering Design, Dance, Film, Music, and Theatre – and at-large UNLV faculty senator (2021-24), and Faculty Senate Executive Committee member (2022-23). As an Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) executive committee member, she is active in supporting transdisciplinary Arts and research integration in higher education, and is the founding editor of the new peer-reviewed open access eJournal Tradition Innovations [in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education], a collaboration between a2ru, the College of Fine Arts, and UNLV Libraries. 

To enhance her work with faculty and as chair of the College of Fine Arts Work Climate Task Force (2020-22), she received a competitive grant for mediation training in 2020 and became a mediator for the UNLV Ombuds Office in Summer 2021. In her mediation facilitation, she emphasizes the power of mediation to help transform conflict into resilient working relationships. 

A graduate of Cornell University (M.A. & Ph.D.) and the University of California, Berkeley (B.A.), and former visiting assistant professor at the highly selective, liberal arts-focused Pomona College, Dr. Houy understands the needs and challenges of higher education institutions that value research, teaching, and diversity. Her interdisciplinary career enhances this: After earning her Ph.D. in humanities with cultural studies and media studies emphasis, she followed her interest in online learning technologies and computer programming to become a learning technologist and professional development facilitator, including for the international Computer Science For All movement. She enjoys teaching media studies, cultural studies, and history courses, as well as no-prerequisite courses for artists and designers on using coding and mobile app development as creative “canvas.”

Her scholarship focuses on socially and culturally disruptive visual culture, propaganda technologies and techniques, and research-based best practices for online student engagement. Her peer-reviewed publications include articles, presentation posters, and digital scholarship on teaching innovation research, and book chapters on social control through emerging technologies, resistance techniques to such social control mechanisms, and technology and sustainability. 

She practices Aikido, a martial art focused on conflict de-escalation.