Jonathan Gunnell, Ed.D.
Director of the Center for Educational Innovation (Penn State). Instructor of education (Point Park University). Performer of music (Pittsburgh area). Audio engineer (at large).
I direct the Center for Educational Innovation at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, where my team and I help faculty design and teach online courses and build the programs and web applications that support them. I’ve also taught 50+ courses since 2008, first music technology and guitar at Duquesne and now graduate education courses at Point Park University.
I came to instructional design through music. I studied music technology and sound recording at Duquesne, taught there for eleven years, and wrote a dissertation on whether background music in instructional video helps or hurts (unfortunately, it mostly hurts). From there I managed online programs at the University of Pittsburgh before moving to Behrend in 2019, where I’ve since taken on university-wide roles like co-chairing Penn State’s Online Coordinating Council.
Since 2002 I’ve played guitar in bands around Pittsburgh. Right now that’s My so-called 90s Band, about 40 shows a year; every show I could track down is listed here. Before that there were The Red Western, Satin Gum, Winslow, Derek White and the Monophobics, and a few others, and for most of those years I was also behind the console, engineering and mixing records for friends’ bands (recording credits).
The band is a business as much as a hobby. Gunner Status LLC has run My so-called 90s Band since 2016, and the booking, setlists, social media, and this website all run on the same stack I use at work: Next.js, Supabase, Airtable, and a good deal of Claude Code.
Nov7Full Band
Nov21AcousticJan9AcousticMay8AcousticPrivateMay15Full BandJun19Full BandJul4Full BandJul17Full BandPenn State Behrend’s 2026–2030 strategic plan has five priorities, 22 goals, over a hundred initiatives, and a set of KPIs that each roll up into the level above. The overview is a single page where every priority rolls up from its goals, every goal from its initiatives, and every initiative from the KPIs that feed…
Read moreThe public site for my 90s cover band, rebuilt on Next.js, Vercel, and Supabase. The shows section is the center of it. Every gig since 2016, about 400 of them, has its own page with a map, a Google Calendar link, and a downloadable .ics file. Upcoming and past shows come from a Supabase database of gigs and reusable…
Read moreAt our acoustic shows the audience picks the setlist. Someone scans the QR code on the banner, puts in their name, chooses from the roughly 600 songs we know (searchable by title or artist, or they type in something we might not), and hits send. On stage, the request lands on our iPads within a few seconds. That whole…
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