STA Work Blog

STAs: Student Technology Assistants

Who We Are
LAITS: IT and Facilities Director, Joe TenBarge initiated the Student Technology Assistant program in 2004. STAs are UT students who work on a variety of projects in collaboration with UT faculty and LAITS staff members. STAs assist College of Liberal Arts faculty members and administrative staff with print and web design. From building presentations, to creating audio/visual works, and producing online classes in the LAITS film studios, STAs are instrumental in helping COLA faculty realize their vision for multimedia projects that enhance their teaching and the students learning experience. By the end of their student careers, STAs have portfolios which demonstrate their accrued technical and design skills.

Prospective STAs:

Creative and technically inclined students are appointed as STAs for one year, with the possibility of being rehired as long as they study at the university. Applicants for the program are hired before both long semesters. Interested students may look for postings on Hire-A-Longhorn when positions are available. Positions will have Student Technology Assistant (illustrator or web designer) in the title of the job post.

Faculty and Staff:

Faculty & Staff with questions about services, please contact us.

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/laits/contacts.php

Audio Services: Michael C Heidenreich, Director of Studio Operations & STA Program Coordinator
Video Services: Kelly Webster, Video Production Supervisor, Video STA Supervisor
Graphic Design & Web Design Services: Suloni Robertson, Art Director / Design & Coding STA Supervisor

Narrowing down the mockups

September 14, 2018 By Valerie Tran

Today I worked on drafts for the History department anniversary project. These are the drafts that I narrowed down to!

These are the drafts I sent off for approval.

I will refine the chosen draft on Monday!

Patch Update

September 13, 2018 By Estella Sun

So here’s my progress on the STA Level 4 patch! I’ve narrowed it down to the two versions I like the most (I’ll have to choose one before I submit):

And these are the many other versions I drafted in Illustrator before settling on these two:

So you can I went through several iterations of my patch design. I basically started with the general idea that I wanted to incorporate a simple, kind of retro looking hand–whether it be in the form of a fist or the number four. The fist, I thought, ended up looking slightly too cliched, and I liked the almost relaxed feel of “four” hand. The polaroid-looking design was me trying to get a retro feel, and even though I did like it, I couldn’t incorporate the colors well into that one. (Maybe it could work as a pin or something!)

After settling on the shield-shaped design, I played around mostly with colors and embellishments. This design was actually derived from one of my sketches in the earlier post.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how my idea came out even if it doesn’t get picked. I’ve never really designed a patch before, so this was a really fun and interesting challenge.