Husband-and-wife duo stitch together media, fashion | Culture

Husband-and-wife professor duo Joseph and Katie Jones have worked to bring students from their respective colleges together since 2019. Now, with the creation of the College of Creative Arts and Media, they’re taking their collaboration to new heights.

As part of WVU’s “Academic Transformation,” the Reed College of Media merged with the College of Creative Arts and three Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design programs this summer, bringing the couple into the same college.

Working as a media law and ethics professor and a fashion, dress and merchandising professor before the merger, Joseph and Katie Jones have previously collaborated through Disegno Italia, a study abroad program that allows students to study art history and fashion in Italy. 

Joseph Jones joins the escapade every other year as the trip’s co-leader, creating an opportunity for media students to attend.

Due to their collaboration, the trip now incorporates aspects of media-making and media reflection into the trip, in addition to learning about the fashion culture in Italy.

“That might be my favorite thing we do, getting to go to Italy with students and opening the world to them,” Joseph Jones said.

In the wake of the merger to create the College of Creative Arts and Media, the pair shares the hope that it will be easier for programs to collaborate.

“I think this kind of merger of the colleges really worked well for us to kind of want to expand what we do further outside of our own fields into these more cultural areas that our colleagues will now bring to us,” Joseph Jones said.

The pair is confident that the merger will bring “less roadblocks” to their collaboration efforts.

“Students have multiple interests, let’s take advantage of that, let’s actually help people be complete people,” Joseph Jones said.

The couple worked as a unit for many years before their time at WVU, meeting at ages 12 and 13 in Kansas City, Missouri. They began dating after high school. 

“We’ve essentially been together since then so it’s been a long and fruitful relationship,” Katie Jones said.

They studied at different colleges while completing their undergraduate degrees but both received doctorates from the University of Missouri. Although they had known each other for many years, they did not realize their similar interests until college.

At WVU, the couple agrees that empathy plays a large role in their teaching, as they aim to recognize and understand their student’s points of view.

“Empathy for both of us has become a big keyword, particularly within our teaching,” Katie Jones said. “That’s the kind of big umbrella that we’re working under, and how we’re doing that looks a little bit different.”

Katie Jones said understanding that students are already coming to college with experience is important to their teaching methods.

“It’s about figuring out where students are and not presuming that students are empty vessels and that we are going to dump all of this information in them,” Katie Jones said.

When Joseph and Katie Jones are not working, they are living “a pretty ideal professor life” by trying out new restaurants, chatting at coffee shops and going to museums.

For more information on the College of Creative Arts and Media, visit creativeartsandmedia.wvu.edu.