A New Face Behind the Scenes: Welcome to the MOTAL Board, ​Professor Brad Hughes

We are excited to welcome Brad Hughes, Ph.D., to serve as the new CFO on our MOTAL Board of Directors. Brad brings his passion for teaching and learning combined with a wealth of experience to guide our fiscal management of exhibits and pedagogical design of new projects, such as the mobile museum exhibit Your Baby’s Amazing Brain. He is looking forward to chatting with our members, his favorite part of the job, and hearing their perspectives to help guide him in approaching goals for MOTAL.
 
During his tenure as a professor of teaching at the University of California at Irvine, in the School of Biological Science, School of Education, and Claire Trevor School of the Arts, Professor Hughes has taught 30 different university courses, while conducting research on the teaching and learning process across disciplines and levels. Beginning as a K-12 classroom teacher and moving into teacher training and supervision, he has developed a deep appreciation for teachers and learners. Joining in with the mission of MOTAL is a natural fit for Brad and he is excited to be on board and to see where mobilizing MOTAL will take us.
 
Complementing his passion for teaching and learning, Dr. Hughes has been involved with numerous federal and state grants and programs, serving in various capacities such as campus center director, executive director, principal investigator, and media director, which have contributed to his experience with oversight accounting on budgets integrated with justifications, tracking funding streams for internal audits and strategic development, optimizing efficiency of operations, project design and management.


Working with science centers, such as the Aquarium of the Pacific as their Director of Professional Development, Media and Research, Brad conducted trainings for docents and the educational directors, to guide interpreters in developing best pedagogical approaches to engaging informal audiences. As a director of a university M.S. program in science, education, and media, he trained many graduates in museum, teaching and learning-related areas of expertise. As executive director for the Equitable Science Curriculum integrating arts in public education, he orchestrated the teaming of UCI with the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the Orange County Department of Education in creating curriculum for teachers and students across California to integrate the arts with science, a budding field combining arts with STEM, known as STEAM.


Perhaps more than anything Dr. Hughes enjoys learning from the people he meets and finding the teacher and learner in everyone. He has supervised over a hundred student researchers engaging in similar educational explorations and now he wants to explore with all of us.


Please join us in welcoming Brad to the team, and you can visit him online or reach out to him via email through these links:


Hughes Media & Design Lab
 
ESCAPE — Equitable Science Curriculum integrating Arts in Public Education


http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5587