Vincent Paul Campi, Vince to most and Mr. Campi to countless students, lost his long, hard-fought battle with cancer at 11:35pm on Sunday, September 28, 2025. He was 69 years old.

Vince is survived by his five brothers, one sister, seven nieces and nephews, and several cousins. He joined his mother, father, and two brothers in heaven and will be missed by all whose lives he touched.

Vince invested deeply in his students and could often be found in his classroom in the middle of the night because he just couldn't leave his latest lesson or photography project unfinished. His legacy will live on in not only his own photographs, but also the artwork created by his students as a result of his mentorship.

A family-only burial service will be held at Santa Clara Mission Cemetery. A memorial service open to friends, family, colleagues, and former students will be held on November 22, 2025 at 2pm at Church on the Way in Van Nuys, CA.   

  In accordance with his teacher bio, Vince would want you to know that after securing his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing and a Certification in Photography from UCLA, he began his teaching career in 1999 by teaching English classes at Millikan Middle School (currently Louie Armstrong Middle School) in Sherman Oaks.  His innovation inspired him to collect 20 old scrapped computers to build his first computer lab, so he could use digital tools to teach students how to build interactive multimedia grammar, writing and spelling study books to improve their grades. This achievement, along with other innovative things that were going on at Millikan, caught the attention of the USC’s Annenberg Center and their Multimedia Symposium, which invited Vince to become a part of their 3 year study program.

     After completing his Career Tech Education (CTE) credential, Vince transitioned into teaching a full schedule of digital multimedia and photography classes, which required securing funding to get an entirely new Mac lab, cameras, light and the Adobe Photoshop Suite, Vince created a Broadcast Academy that produced weekly campus news videos, and he led professional development seminars and conferences to train teachers in creative ways to use technology in their classrooms.  

    Then in 2007, he was persuaded by Millikan's past Principal Dr Norm Isaac to move to CHAMPS (Chart High Arts Multimedia Performance School) to become the Multimedia Department Chair, and created the CHAMPS Digital Media Academy.  Vince wrote the Career Tech ED eligibility, secured Perkins and incentive grants to create new computer labs with cutting edge equipment, professional lighting, and cameras, wrote the Digital Media Academy curriculum and the interactive digital textbook, and posted professional instructional videos on YouTube, a professional photography portfolio at vincecampi.com, Instagram profiles @vincecampi, @vcampi.adventures, and student work @champs digitalmediaarts.  

     Vince became an Adobe Certified Educator, an Adobe Certified Professional, an Apple Certified Pro, a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, and a Google Certified Teacher recognized for his innovative uses of technology in the classroom.  His CHAMPS classroom also became an Adobe Professional Cert exam location and his students were able to graduate with Adobe Suite certifications.

     If Vince were alive, he would tell you that "Nothing fills him with such an amazing sense of fulfillment than inspiring young people to develop their individual artistic skills and voice, then witnessing the confidence they exuded after working hard and creating something fantastic using newly acquired digital skills along with their life’s experience.  He watched in amazement as they broke the rules and created new art! Witnessing happy fulfilled kids, growing, safely experimenting, and expanding was his reason for why he taught" right up to his passing in September 2025.

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