For over 25 years, CU Denver’s College of Arts & Media (CAM) has consistently trained and equipped creative students who have entered their respective industries with strong portfolios, ready to work. Each graduating class is full of talented, dedicated students, and a handful of them are named outstanding graduates. This year, CAM is celebrating seven such graduates, all of whom displayed great dedication to their studies and received recognition from the faculty who taught them.

Film & Television

Said Cisneros-Toledo has spent his education becoming a major player in the Film & Television community through hard work and dedication in a sometimes overlooked area of filmmaking: the sound department. Originally from Boulder, opportunities to get hands-on with industry-standard gear drew Said to CU Denver and provided the foundation for him to start building a mastery in his craft. Said gained a reputation for pushing past the requirements of class, and he put in the hours of practice needed to acquire technical expertise outside of it. Today, he’s reached the point of being able to recommend texts and resources for faculty use in their classes. After graduating, Said will lend his knowledge and skill to a feature film currently in production and continue building what’s likely to be a very successful freelance career.

An appreciation for storytelling stoked by Justice League cartoons and a journalism class developed into a love of video production and eventually brought Matteen Saremi to CAM. Matteen appreciated being able to get an education at half the price of a prestigious film school and enjoyed working with friends to create stories in his film production classes. Matteen’s junior year action short The Insurer won an award for best production at CAM’s annual film awards, Cinefest. According to his instructors, his sci-fi senior capstone project, Make Time, demonstrated an outstanding ability to write well-executed original stories using clever dialogue. After graduation, he intends to continue writing and directing to sharpen his skills as he explores Colorado’s film industry.

Visual Arts

After a disenchanting experience studying art history in New York, Kansas-born Zach Lacy transferred to CAM to complete his degree. The proximity to museums, non-profit arts organizations, and galleries made CU Denver a perfect choice; one confirmed by supportive faculty and a curricular focus on the multidisciplinary nature of art history. Zach’s education was characterized by research on depictions of gender in medieval religious artwork and Takashi Murakami’s postmodern “Superflat” movement. His research on both subjects was presented at the Front Range Art History Symposium and the SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium. Before beginning graduate studies at Boston University, Zach will spend the summer interning with the Provenance Research Department at the Denver Art Museum where he will help identify the ownership history of various artworks and contribute to the curatorial accuracy of displays.

Having multi-generational roots in Denver made CAM convenient and accessible for Josephine Clark. She’ll be finishing this semester earning both a BA in Art History and a BFA in Art Practices. Josephine’s education has coincided with an ambitious creative practice developed while taking on significant leadership roles. During her time at CU Denver, Josephine transformed the Arts Practices student organization, curated an exhibition at the CU Denver Experience Gallery, and taught high schoolers during LYNX Camp’s first iteration of its Visual Immersive Art camp. Outside of campus, her work has been shown in eight local exhibitions and her research has been presented at three art history symposiums. A college career full of grants, gallery work experience, and internships will surely make Josephine a competitive candidate as she applies for jobs in the arts—and, of course, continues to share her art with the world.

Media Forensics

In a world rife with inaccurate and manipulated content, National Center for Media Forensics (NCMF) graduate Susan Kost will join the fight against misinformation equipped with a Master of Science in Media Forensics from CU Denver. She discovered the program while doing research for her full-time position in academia. She also learned that forensic science is a majority-female outlier in STEM. Feeling the shared aspirations of women in academia to uplift the significance of science and pursue truth, Susan chose to use her background in video production to conduct impactful research on video frame extraction. Graduation doesn’t mark the end of her scientifically sound and thoughtful work, however, as she’ll continue her research with the hope of presenting it at the American Academy of Forensic Science conference next year.

Music & Entertainment Industry Studies

Graduate Jacob Passini found everything he needed to take his audio engineering skills to the next level with CU Denver’s Master of Science in Recording Arts program. After moving to Colorado ten years ago from Bloomington, Illinois, the lifelong performer received his bachelor’s degree in music education from University of Northern Colorado before coming to CAM to pursue a graduate degree and begin working as a freelance audio engineer. Jacob dedicated his time at CU Denver to innovating in creative coding and sound design. He approached his studies with a collaborative spirit that led to his academic excellence. After graduation, Jacob will return to teaching, this time equipped with a deep understanding of music technology to pass on to his students.

During his time at CU Denver, you could always find performance major Hunter Gammel showing up for every class, playing at local venues with bands composed of fellow CAM musicians, and tutoring fellow students or high schoolers at LYNX Camp. Being in those same camps as a high schooler and experiencing the program’s focus on contemporary music became the deciding factor for Hunter to commit to four years of intensive piano instruction. He’s spent all those years as a resident advisor while excelling academically and building a strong network, leading to him be named RA of the Year at CU Denver’s Milo Awards. Everything will come full circle for Hunter with one more summer working at LYNX Camp before he continues to gig in the Denver Metro Area and work on a recording project with fellow CAM alum, Finn O’Sullivan.