Design Team

Amanda Chaffin


A little bit about me - I am the middle child. I have two sisters (one older and one younger) and my parents are still married and live in Charlotte. I got my first gaming console, an Atari something or other, when I was about seven and we played it until it broke. After that, we got our first PC in 1989 and I very happily learned the ins' and out's of computing, mostly by breaking the computer. My first college, and many many games later, I became an English major. About three years later, I dropped out, knowing that what I was learning was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I lucked into a job with a webhosting company, got hooked onto Final Fantasy VIII, Counter Strike, Everquest, and Dark Ages of Camelot, and finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to program/work on/be a part of the video game industry. So, I quit the job, and enrolled at UNCC as a computer scientist. Three years later, I finished the program and enrolled in the Master's program where I will graduate in 2009 with an MS in Computer Science and a Gaming certificate. I have also been accepted into the Ph. D. program for computer science at UNCC.

Hobbies - My serious hobbies outside of school include icon making, fanfiction writing, reading, writing my novel, playing in the SCA, and I am a full time hockey fan.

Andrew Lichtenhan

I have always loved video games. From playing Defender with my older brother on the VCS, to harvesting little sisters in Bioshock, I have always had a love for games. I have played more at different times of my life, but there was always some point where I could sit down, have a break, and grab a controller or keyboard and have at it.

Despite loving games, I never fully pushed my time towards them. I had school, Boy Scouts, Marching Band, and much more in my life that kept gaming as a moment to escape, have fun, and enjoy when I had some free time.

Paul Pawlowski

Well my dad works for IBM so I have been into computers since I was born. I got my fist computer around the time I was 7 and started playing games then, little dos based games printing off certificates with a dot matrix printer. As I grew older the games got more complicated, Starcraft, Asheron's call, eq2 etc.

I have always loved playing them, so much so I can easily lose house playing them. So the opportunity to instill this love in others and allow them to learn something from that is something I take great pleasure in.

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Brad Pejsa



I moved to NC in 1986 and graduated from Mooresville Senior High School in 1987.  I attended Western Carolina University from 1987 to 1991.  I graduated with a BSBA in Business Management.  From there I started working for Sherwin Williams where I managed several retail stores.  I wanted to get out of retail type work, so I worked as an industrial sales rep for a few years and later accepted a position working for a development company.   I worked for that company for 13 years until the housing struggles of late 2007 to 2008 started to set in.  It was at this point I decided to return to school and pursue a degree in Software Info Systems.

 

I have attended UNCC full time since Aug 2008.  Summer 2009 I worked for Vanguard where I helped code and implement the chat feature for the open account team along with a few smaller projects.  I am still working part-time for Vanguard and I have recently accepted a position to work full time upon graduation (May 2010).




I was a total gamer (if you can call it that back) back in the day of the early pc’s.  My first pc/game system was the TI-99 with a cassette tape deck to load games with (it rocked).  I have been married and have a 12 year old at home so gaming has not been a large part of my day for many years due mainly to lack of time.  I typically enjoy games like Call of Duty and Battlefield.