About

Wayne Carlson, a member of the Ohio State faculty since 1988, became the University’s Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies and Dean for Undergraduate Education on September 1, 2009. At the time of his appointment, Vice Provost Carlson was completing his second term as Chair of the Department of Industrial, Interior, and Visual Communication Design, now called the Department of Design (he also served one year as in an interim chair position.) He was appointed as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering in 1988, becoming Associate Professor in 1989, and moved his TIU to the Department of Design in 1991, where he was promoted to Full Professor in 1996. From 1991 to 2001, he also served as Director of Ohio State’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD). Dr. Carlson retired from the OSU faculty in 2017, and is now Professor Emeritus in Design.

Before joining the Ohio State faculty, he taught Mathematics at Hope College in Holland Michigan, and Math and Computer Science at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. After receiving his PhD in Computer Graphics from Ohio State, he served from 1981 to 1987 as the Executive Vice President of Operations for Cranston/Csuri Productions, a Columbus-based company producing special effects for the international television and advertising industries. His responsibilities at CCP included the direction of research and development efforts, scheduling of productions and production personnel, bidding special effects projects, and strategic planning for the company. He was appointed President of the company in 1987 before returning to Ohio State the following year.

Widely published in the computer graphics literature, Vice Provost Carlson is a professor of design technology and has had complementary appointments in the Departments of Art, Art Education, and Computer Science and Engineering. His research interests are in the areas of computer animation, geometric modeling, interactive museum installation design, the use of computer graphics and multimedia in education, and visualization. He has had grants from NSF, ARPA, NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. Department of Education, the Ohio Board of Regents, and several industries and foundations.

He earned his BS degree in Mathematics from Idaho State University, MS degrees from Idaho State (Mathematics) and Ohio State (Computer Systems), and a PhD in Computer Graphics, also from Ohio State.

Dr. Carlson has been active in his community of Grandview Heights, serving on several city and schools committees, and in his professional organization, ACM-SIGGRAPH, where he has completed terms as Vice Chair and Director. He is currently a Trustee for the Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society, and oversees the integration of technology in the Society’s archives and activities. His book, Between the Rivers, chronicles the history in the tri-village area, which includes Grandview, Marble Cliff, and early Upper Arlington.