Under the general rubric of "visual literacy", his course work includes film history, media studies, and theory and aesthetics.
More recently, he has produced two radio series about music, including the 15-part The World of Robert Schumann and the 17-part Piano Portraits, that have been broadcast worldwide and are now a part of the permanent collection of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives in Lincoln Center, New York.
Recent book publications include The Gothic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), which featured his interviews with dozens of prominent figures in literature, music, painting, and film.
He has exploited his opportunities as a broadcast interviewer to draw hundreds of images of popular actors, filmmakers, musicians, many personally inscribed and autographed.
His hundreds of video and audio interviews with prominent figures in the film, music, and literary fields can be accessed on his web site, "Over the Rainbow," as part of the University of Kansas Digital Initiatives program.
In addition to his teaching responsibilities and mentoring activities at the University of Kansas (where he has served as Associate Chair for the Department of Theater and Film), Tibbetts brings his knowledge and experience in the arts to a wider community service.
[7][8][9] Attending were: Mike Nichols,[10] Jack Haley,[11] Glenn Ford,[12] Louise Fletcher,[13] Don "Red" Barry[14] John Houseman,[15] Richard Donner, Virginia Christine, Victor Jory, Fritz Feld, Franco Nero, John McCook, Earl Holliman, Henry Brandon, Joan Leslie, Vivian Blaine, Henry Wilcoxon, Una Merkel, George Pal, Jackie Joseph, Ida Lupino, George Raft, John Phillip Law, Steve Landesberg, Robert Cummings, Rosemary DeCamp, Mel Torme, Judy Canova, Diana Canova, Janet Leigh, Kelly Curtis, Jamie Lee Curtis, Olivia Hussey, and Yvonne De Carlo.