Sinan Zafar, BA, UC-Irvine

UCI commencement exercises will be held today for the undergraduate students.  Among those students receiving their Bachelors Degrees will be Sinan Zafar. Sinan is our first real sound design undergraduate student at UCI. He showed up on our radar over two years ago, and quickly made himself indispensable at UCI. He worked on large projects with the graduate students, was the go-to designer for workshop productions with his classmates, and took a significant number of graduate level classes. This year, in addition to all of that, he also designed two shows for the UCI mainstage season. Not surprisingly, he also became our first Honors in Sound Design student.

Sinan will be moving to LA following graduation to pursue his creative work, and the future has great things in store for him.  Congratulations, Sinan!!

Beth Lake and Jeff Polunas, MFA, UC-Irvine

Congratulations to Beth Lake and Jeff Polunas, our most recent graduates of the sound design program here at UCI! They're both terrific designers, and Mike, BC, and I are proud of them and wish them great success!

Beth hails from Arizona by way of Colorado, but she also spent time at Jacob's Pillow out in Mass.  Her thesis design was Arcadia, and she's looking forward to relocating to NYC.

Jeff spent formative years in Ohio, but had been in California (including work for PCPA) for quite a while now.  His thesis was a design for Dance Visions, our faculty-choreographed dance concert. He'll stay around the socal area for the time being.  Jeff is also getting married this summer, so it's quite an exciting time for him!

They have both been terrific students and designers, and I look forward to the great things they'll do in the future!