Robert Gould
Founder and Director, EXL Lab
Throughout his diverse career in the arts and education, Robert Gould has been involved with the development, creation, and production of visuals, design and story for all media and education applications.
Robert Gould has been involved with progressive education programs and organizations for over 30 years and consults for the USC Dornsife Office of Experiential & Applied Learning (EXL) as the creator and Director of EXL Learning Lab @ USC.
Robert was Vice President of Education First!, an entertainment based non-profit that supported progressive programs in education. He was part of the founding team that created the charter Accelerated School in South LA and Yoga Ed, the premiere international yoga in schools’ program.
In 1999 Robert formed Imaginosis, a transmedia arts company that works with visual artists and writers to collaboratively create and strategically develop entertainment intellectual properties that have broad, transmedia applications while maintaining the integrity of the creator’s original vision.
Robert is President of Imaginosis Media Design that provides concept, art direction and story narrative and themed attraction and experience design services to international themed entertainment, event production and media companies.
He also serves as US Ambassador and education consultant for Lucca Comics & Games, the second largest pop culture festival in the world. Robert makes his home in Eugene, Oregon.
Schools and Classrooms are learning destinations for convening, communicating, creating and sharing. The Community and the World are the learning destinations of adventure, discovery, connections and relationships.”
Kiel Shaub, PhD
Academic Curator, EXL Lab
Kiel Shaub is a passionate educator, curriculum designer, writer, and scholar with over a decade of research and teaching experience at the university level.
As Academic Curator for the EXL Lab, Kiel develops, designs, and leads dynamic experiential and maker-focused programs and events at the University of Southern California and affiliated high schools and middle schools in the Los Angeles area.
Kiel is also a Lecturer in the University of Southern California’s Department of Physical Education & Mind Body Health, where he designs and teaches dynamic experiential learning courses at the intersection of mind-body health, sustainability, and creative expression.
Previously, Kiel taught as a lecturer in UCLA’s English Department, where he received his Ph.D. in 2020. His literary research, focusing on Romanticism, aesthetics, and the history of criticism, has appeared in Romanticism, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, The Keats-Shelley Journal, William Blake’s Gothic Imagination, and Female Voices, 1770-1830.
Richard Fliegel
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs
Richard Fliegel, Ph.D., is Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs in USC Dornsife College, where he directs the General Education Program, Freshman Seminars, Multidisciplinary Activities, and Interdisciplinary Studies, and creates interdisciplinary majors and minors. He has authored mysteries and speculative fiction and written for television, including Star Trek: The Next Generation. His novels have been reviewed in the New York Times, nominated for a Shamus Award, and cited in Liz Smith’s nationally syndicated column.
Even John D. Rockefeller, the wealthiest man of his time, came to understand the practical importance of improving the lives of others. The EXL Lab in USC Dornsife College creates opportunities for experiential learning that teach our students how to make their lives more meaningful — by using their resources and education to help other people succeed.”
The EXL Lab is supported by the Tarsadia Foundation.