About Cori Ratliff

The Basics

I have been involved in art and computers for mostly the whole of my life. Both of my parents were involved in computers so as a youth I was exposed to computers in our home since I was a child. Of course the dinosaurs, I mean computers, that we had back in the 80's are nothing like the systems of today. Growing up I always had a love for art and throughout my school career I participated in every art class available, served as teaching assistants for art instructors, participated in art clubs, and basically lived in the respective art labs from Junior High through College.

Throughout my high school and college years I did various freelance artwork, mostly for fun, though it kept me busy. After several years of not being sure if I was going to leave California to go to school, or move to live with family, I graduated from Cerro Coso College with a Associate of Art degree in the field of Art. Immediately following graduation I began working at Cerro Coso and have been working there ever since. Since that time I have earned two more degrees in Digital Animation and Fine Art.

In 1999 I participated in the second offering of Cerro Coso's Academy of Digital Animation. It was pretty tough working full-time and going to school 40+ hours a week, not including the 20+ hours I averaged in lab on the weekends. Sometimes I look back and wonder how I ever survived, but I wouldn't have missed it, it was perhaps some of the most demanding and rewarding 3 months of my life. It was great fun and I learned a great deal. If anyone is interested in the Animation Program I highly suggest visiting the website to learn more about it.

Work Background

I have been working at Cerro Coso College since 1997. I started working for Paul Meyers (now retired art faculty) as a student worker, who offered me the position by handing me a 10 page copy of information on how to use HTML, and then he told me to go learn HTML over Christmas break and then come and work for him in January. So I did. I found that I really enjoyed working with the web, and saw the potential for it's use, and so I was eager to get in on the web development trend. Web Design was a perfect match for my artistic and computing abilities, and I have enjoyed the creativity it allows me. After a semester of helping Paul with the Cerro Coso site, I was offered a position as a Department Assistant to help develop the student services section of the website, and things sort of went from there to a full-time Website Program Coordinator position in December of 1997.

In 2000 I spent a year with the Media Arts department as their Instructional Design Specialist working on a grant project. I worked with interns on design projects amongst a host of other tasks. It was great getting to work closely with the Media Arts faculty and staff on some really exciting projects. Check out some of the neat stuff we did through the Work Based Learning Center .

After working for the Media Arts grant project I returned to working as the Instructional Design Specialist for the college, which means that I maintain the college website, make sure that it is usable and accessible, and provide design services to faculty whenever they need it. This may include creating slideshows with audio, creating websites, creating multimedia, or providing training. Over the past 8 years that I have worked at the college I have expanded my knowledge of web design through research, workshops, reading, basically any way that I could. In 2001 I redesigned the college website to improve it's usability and to make it accessible for disabled persons. I am currently working on a second redesign.

I also teach online classes for the Web Design Academy at Cerro Coso. I have taught Fundamentals of Web Design (now called Web Design with Dreamweaver) and Accessibility and Usability. I currently teach Digital Imaging with Photoshop, Illustration and Design with Illustrator, Advanced Digital Imaging and Illustration, and Digital Photo Retouching. To learn more about the courses I am currently teaching or am planning on offering click visit my Faculty Website.