Yvonne Houy, Ph.D.
CFA Learning Technologist
Biography
Yvonne Houy is the learning technologist for the UNLV College of Fine Arts, supporting faculty in Architecture, Art, Entertainment Engineering and Design, Dance, Film, Music, and Theatre.
Through her work with the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), she supports the integration of the arts, creative practice, and transdisciplinary research in higher education. She is co-chair of the a2ru AI and the Arts Working Group and editor-in-chief of Tradition-Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education, a peer-reviewed, diamond open-access eJournal collaboration among a2ru, the UNLV College of Fine Arts, and UNLV Libraries. She led the development of the journal’s inaugural special issue, Artificial Intelligence and Possible Futures for the Arts, which examines how AI is reshaping creative practice, authorship, pedagogy, and cultural production. Building on the journal’s scholarship, she has organized webinars, conference panels, and other programming that bring artists, educators, researchers, and technologists together to explore the challenges and possibilities of AI for the arts and higher education.
She also serves on the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) Advisory Board for Re-Imagining Peer Review, a Mellon Foundation-funded project advancing more equitable, inclusive, and collaborative approaches to peer review and humanities publishing.
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 and became a mediator for the UNLV Ombuds Office in summer 2021. In her mediation and facilitation work, she emphasizes the power of mediation to transform conflict into resilient working relationships.
On the UNLV Faculty Senate, she has served as at-large UNLV faculty senator (2021-26) and on the UNLV Faculty Senate Executive Committee (2022–23). She was a UNLV AI Fellow in 2024-25.
A graduate of Cornell University (M.A. and Ph.D.) and the University of California, Berkeley (B.A.), and a former visiting assistant professor at the highly selective, liberal arts-focused Pomona College and Scripps College, Houy understands the needs and challenges of higher education institutions that value research, teaching, creativity, and diversity. Her interdisciplinary career reflects these commitments. After earning her Ph.D. in the humanities, with emphases in cultural studies and media studies, 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, as well as no-prerequisite courses that introduce artists and designers to coding and mobile app development as creative “canvases.”
Her scholarship focuses on socially and culturally disruptive visual culture, propaganda technologies and techniques, artificial intelligence and the arts, and research-based best practices for online student engagement. Her peer-reviewed publications include articles, presentation posters, and digital scholarship on teaching innovation and on AI in the Arts, as well as book chapters on social control through emerging technologies, techniques for resisting such control mechanisms, and technology and sustainability.
She practices Aikido, a martial art centered on conflict de-escalation.