He is a founder and architect of the Fitchburg State Game Design program, which offers the first major in Game Design at a public institution on the East Coast. Sam studies the intersections of play, media and everyday life. He is the author of numerous articles and the book Portable Play in Everyday Life: The Nintendo DS (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.) He holds a doctorate in Sociology and a masters in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research in New York City.