When Andrew DeVigal began his career is journalism, he was certain that it was only temporary. But because of his love for the collaborative nature of a newsroom and the art of storytelling, he always found his way back.

DeVigal has made his way into the rainy city of Portland, Oregon to join forces with the UO and lead the new Center for Journalism Innovation and Civic Engagement.

The School of Journalism and Communication elected DeVigal as chair of Journalism innovation and civic engagement. His creativity, passion and drive to bring together communities and modernize the  field of journalism are the traits Julie Newton, interim Dean of the SOJC, believes will push the center to excel in the evolving world of Journalism.

DeVigal’s journalism career began at the Contra Costa Times. He worked as an editorial assistant while earning his degree in information systems from San Francisco State University.

After graduation, DeVigal accepted a full-time job working in the San Francisco Bay Area for a database programming company looking at real estate.

Feeling unsatisfied about the lack of engagement in the community, DeVigal realized programming wasn’t for him.

It had only been a month or so that he had been working toward what he thought would be his career. He went back to the drawing board to search for his next endeavor.

A one-year fellowship with The Chicago Tribune was his ticket back into the world of journalism. DeVigal’s fellowship quickly turned into a full-time position as a graphic artist, and later he was the first web designer to bring the Chicago Tribune in the digital realm of the Internet.

“The Chicago Tribune was one of the very first news websites that came out, and I felt like we really broke a lot of ground around interactive story telling,” DeVigal said.

DeVigal spoke of one of the first databases released from the digital version of the Tribune that his team helped create, which took a look at crime in Chicago. This database was instrumental in engaging the public and created an outlet for citizens to type in a given zip code, which would show an assessment of the current crime in that area.

This database was created before Adobe Flash or even Google Maps.

“It was just the beginning to me about how to leverage both information and action, to provide meaningful information to the audience and for your community,” DeVigal said.

The Tribune introduced DeVigal to Steve Duenes, who was the new intern filling DeVigal’s former position. The two collaborated at the Tribune, but the duo would meet again – this time in New York. They worked on separate desks at the New York Times: DeVigal as the multi-media editor, Duenes in the graphics department.

As far as Duenes was concerned, DeVigal’s desk took on and conquered a new way of thinking for digital news.

“They were an innovative group,” Duenes said. “With innovation coming from a few groups at the Times during that period, Andrew was an important one of those groups.”

Duenes believes that DeVigal brings an uncommon experience to the field of journalism, combining research, reporting, as well as story telling and he knows how to piece the puzzles together.

“(DeVigal is) a sort of a disciplined kind of collector of interesting things that he sees in the digital realm,” Duenes said. “He takes these things that he is surveying, and takes different kind of pieces where they make sense and makes something new because something new is called for in the problem that he is trying to solve.”

DeVigal spent close to seven years at the New York Times. His big break after the Times came while he was viewing a panel where he met Brad Johnson, who is a co-founder of Second Story Interactive Studios, based in Portland.

DeVigal was on the panel partly based on the work he had done involving the Chicago crime maps at the Chicago Tribune.

“When I saw what (Johnson) presented during that panel I was blown away,” DeVigal said. “This guy is really, really on the cutting edge.”

His presentation revolved around interactive story telling, and he and DeVigal followed each other’s senses.

It wasn’t long before DeVigal moved from the Big Apple to Portland’s budding interactive news scene to join the Second Story team.

In time, DeVigal realized that building interactives with Second Story wasn’t feeding his creative side, and at the beginning of 2014, DeVigal decided to re-evaluate which path his career would take and left Second Story.

DeVigal decided to join forces with his wife, Laura Lo Forti, and created a new company – A Fourth Act.

A Fourth Act combines Lo Forti’s background in participatory media, DeVigal’s background in forming collectives and his drive to have the community not just be in the works of storytelling – but to actually be a part of the process.

“A Fourth Act takes on the mission of social issue-based media and community engagement. The knowledge gained through our projects will help inform his work around journalism innovation and civic engagement,” Lo Forti says.

In March, DeVigal learned of the chair position at UO’s George S. Turnbull Portland Center. After a couple of months of interviews and meetings, DeVigal was finally offered the position.

“Since we’ve launched A Fourth Act, we’ve worked together on projects with strong community engagement components. I can see him adopting the same thoughtfulness and intentionality in how he will bring people to the table,” Lo Forti said.

DeVigal said he felt right at home.

“I think it was a perfect fit, ironically the goals of A Fourth Act greatly mirrors, if not is a strong blending, in a Venn diagram of our missions,” DeVigal said. “It’s really about connecting communities and really thinking about how do we not just build an audience with the stories that we do, but how do we connect a community.”

Julie Newton, Dean of the SOJC, hopes that the  innovation center will become an “epicenter of hope, for journalism of communication, throughout the world.”

She believes that DeVigal will pull people together at the center to create innovative ideas as he did at the New York Times – but this time with faculty, students and outside partners.

“I am so excited about the future and the roles this journalism and communications school is going to have in the future, and a key to that is the innovation center, and a key to the innovation center is Andrew DeVigal,” Newton says.

Update: A previous version of this story misspelled the Center for Journalism Innovation and Civic Engagement and the George S. Turnbull Portland Center.