Meet the NITLE Staff

Sean Johnson Andrews

NITLE Program Officer

Dr. Andrews is a program officer at the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE). He recently joined NITLE as an ACLS Public Fellow, taking leave from his role as assistant professor of cultural studies in the internationally recognized Cultural Studies program at Columbia College Chicago. At NITLE, Dr. Andrews will focus on the future of libraries and scholarly communications and help develop the NITLE consulting program’s futures and scenario modeling practice area. 

Dr. Andrews has written and researched on a variety of topics, most recently on the concept of immaterial labor and supporting cultural production in the digital age. His background in communication, media, cultural studies, globalization, and political economy converge on research into the historical development of the concept of intellectual property rights. He is preparing a special issue of the journal Cultural Studies on cultural studies and the law, focusing on the implications of copyright policy for the cultural environment of the future.  

While at Columbia College Chicago, Dr. Andrews taught classes on cultural studies, media, technology, and society. He helped the Cultural Studies program at Columbia develop its methods and methodology program and continues to improve undergraduate teaching materials for this discipline—especially in the direction of interdisciplinary, hands-on, project-based learning using advanced research and writing tools. Dr. Andrews also revised the Cultural Studies internship program for the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Science, developing three separate courses for students completing an internship, all of which integrated a more rigorous program of reflection and experiential learning with the theories and methods of cultural studies. Two of these courses were developed as a sequence that served as an alternative to the capstone thesis. In spring 2011, the first students participated in the Cultural Studies Senior Capstone Internship, presenting their final papers at the public Cultural Studies Forum. Dr. Andrews also served as an outside advisor to the Chicago Youth Centers for a media literacy program developed there; Columbia College Cultural Studies students served as interns.

Before moving to Columbia College Chicago, Dr. Andrews taught classes and advised students in the interdisciplinary Integrative Studies major of New Century College (NCC) at George Mason University. His focus in these activities was on visual culture and society, information in the digital age, globalization, world history, and social theory. At NCC, Dr. Andrews gained extensive experience with team teaching, learning communities, individualized majors, and competency- and portfolio-based experiential learning. Drawing upon the resources of the Center for History and New Media, NCC made the integration of technology into courses a cornerstone of “connecting the classroom to the world.”

Dr. Andrews is the Chair of the Cultural Policy Studies Division of the Cultural Studies Association (U.S.) and helped plan the association’s annual conference last spring, when it was hosted by Columbia College Chicago. He holds an M.A. in Literature with an emphasis in Cultural Studies and a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, both from George Mason University, and a B.A. in Communication from Southwestern University.