James Pierce began his creative career in the video industry, working with everything from local to international clients. However, he primarily worked to help non-profit clients. After over a decade worth of experience in video, he applied his expertise in motion and design and to web design and development. Prior to joining Belmont full-time in 2011, he started a company that allowed artists to create websites, without the need to know all the inter-workings of web design. James continues to design and build web applications that solve needs in the community, educational institutions and design industry. 

James's thesis for his MFA degree, entitled Natural User Interfaces in the Information Age, explored the history and changes in consumer-based computer interactions. He continues to research graphic and natural user interfaces and consults local entrepreneurs creating mobile and web design products.

James is married to a graphic designer and has two small dogs.

Before joining Watkins, Tingle was the program coordinator at Poverty and the Arts (POVA), where she created an artistic professional development curriculum, managed artwork as well as merchandise inventory and sales, and tracked artists’ progress within the program. Prior to her nonprofit work, she was a visual art teacher in local public schools. As a teacher, Tingle enjoyed the challenge of making connections between the arts and academic disciplines, all toward the goal of practical applications in our society. In addition to being an art educator and historian, Tingle is an arts advocate and practicing artist herself.

Katie Mitchell is a Tennessee native. After completing her BFA in studio arts at Belmont, she then migrated to the University of South Carolina in Columbia to pursue an MFA in Painting. Most recently, she was selected as a participant in the Contemporary Chinese Art Institute sponsored by the Confucius Institute of Western Kentucky University. 

When she is not busy teaching, running around the studio, working in the gallery, or knitting, she delights in life's seemingly insignificant moments! 

Following four years of architectural drafting in high school, Prof. Amundson headed to the University of Illinois, where he earned B.S.A.S. and M.Arch. degrees. After graduation he attained his license to practice architecture, working for architecture firms in Illinois, Delaware, and North Carolina. After several years of work as an architect, he changed direction, accepting a position as an instructor delivering the shop safety classes at a newly-launched architecture program, housed within a faith-based, liberal arts college outside of Chicago. While his primary responsibility was teaching the shop safety class and running the shop, he also had opportunities to teach the community service class, architectural design studio, and a furniture design/build studio. During his 17 years there, he built up the shop, shepherded it through the transition to a new building, integrated the art & design and interior design students into the shop experience, and made the transition to the digital fabrication age, learning his way around laser cutters, 3D printers, and CNC routers. He is passionate about teaching, good design, excellence in craft, learning through doing, materials, tinkering with machinery, and any and all things related to wood, especially veneer.

In his time outside of work, Prof. Amundson is passionate about the intersection of his faith and issues of social justice. That interest led him to help found two different chapters of Habitat for Humanity, serve on the Board of Directors of three chapters, and to serve as President of the student chapter he helped to found while a student at the University of Illinois. Later, his passion for affordable housing led to him be appointed by the Mayor of his Illinois hometown to serve as a founding member of the affordable housing commission there, helping to craft the city’s first inclusionary zoning ordinance. He served for twelve years on the housing commission, first as vice-chair and later as chair. 

Prof. Amundson is married to the amazing woman he met in sophomore-year architectural design studio at the University of Illinois, has college-age twin boys, a thirteen year-old Pitbull, and a 104 year-old house that will keep him busy for at least the next 20 or 30 years.