David Leicester Hardy awarded 2025-26 Beck Fellowship
Hardy serves as Graphic Design Program Coordinator and SADAH Assistant Director
School of Art Design and Art History
James Madison University
David Leicester Hardy, Assistant Director of SADAH, Graphic Design Program Coordinator, and Professor of Graphic Design has been awarded the 2025-2026 Paul and Lillieanna Beck Faculty Fellowship for his innovative student-nonprofit partnerships. Hardy launched educational initiatives that allowed students to gain business experience with nonprofit groups as clients. The Beck Faculty Fellowship, which grants $6000 to the recipient, is awarded annually to a SADAH faculty member who brings together campus and community through the visual arts.
“I’m honored to have received the Beck Faculty Fellowship,” Hardy said.
Hardy began his years-long efforts in 2018, with a community project that he used to generate curriculum. Hardy explained, “I assembled an extra class for myself—a dozen students taking independent study. We selected a local nonprofit to work with—the Harrisonburg Educational Foundation. They were planning a fundraising gala over at Hotel Madison, and they needed design for tv commercials, napkins… My class spent the entire semester designing and producing all the materials—brochures, programs, signage.”
The Harrisonburg Educational Foundation supports the area’s public schools, advocating for opportunities and excellence. It was a worthy cause that students could embrace—and the celebration at Hotel Madison added fun and a diversity of assignments.
That semester Hardy’s independent study group took on the name Spark Collective; they met twice a week. In their style guide for the Harrisonburg Educational Foundation they defined themselves with confidence: “SPARK COLLECTIVE is a Graphic Design and Nonprofit Studies student-led creative agency within James Madison University, serving nonprofit institutions in the Shenandoah Valley.”
In 2022, Hardy ran the same model of class a second time. Graphic design and nonprofit studies students again joined the endeavor. “We focused on several JMU student groups: the Rocketry group, the CVPA arts ambassador program,” explained Hardy.
The Shenandoah Folk School became one of the clients of Spark Collective. The mission of the Shenandoah Folk School, which offers workshops in both West Augusta and Mount Crawford, is to “create intergenerational opportunities for adults and families to learn and become more deeply connected to their communities through traditional skill building.” Foodways such as cheese making and sourdough are part of their offerings. Through the client-designer relationship with the Shenandoah Folk School, JMU students learned about communication and deliverables; they designed a logo and a mark—both were striking—and they produced a branding and style guide that included color selections. The experience was invaluable for the students and the client.
Since then, Hardy has done a third iteration of community collaboration—short films featuring faculty. These short films, called SADAH Stories, introduce creative faculty members to a larger community.
More about David and the Beck Fellowship
"…Teaching technology is the heart of Professor Hardy’s work. He has spent the last six years teaching design for Virtual Reality and has presented on his experience at prestigious national and international Design Education conferences. He has also shared his scholarship of teaching at the “Learning Ideas Conference” in New York, highlighting the methods and outcomes of teaching his experimental “UX for Social Good” class, which was the result of the Virginia Online seed grant."
- Rubén Graciani, CVPA Dean
David Leicester Hardy has taught at JMU since 2016 and he specializes in motion graphics and animation. He explores how digital design can apply digital tools to novel uses, breaking out of the confines of the original conception. He is the author of Introduction to Digital Media Design, Transferable Hacks, Skills, and Tricks, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022.
The Beck Fellowship was established by alumni Phillip and Christina Updike (’73) in memory of her parents, Paul and Lillieanna Beck. Lillieanna Beck, like her daughter Christina (known as Tina”), was an artist and devoted herself to learning.