Overview
The Department of Media Arts, Design and Technology Undergraduate program encourages interdisciplinary exploration. The department promotes a breadth of experience, experimentation that helps students ask critical questions and find a creative voice that is confident, professional, and potentially entrepreneurial. Students are prepared to lead careers in the creative industries. Students are taught to be makers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. They are trained to integrate their developing artistic visions and design acuity in traditional materials and emerging technology methods and processes. Students develop a strong foundation in critical thinking and problem-solving. Students are encouraged to think and make beyond the current context to future possibilities.
The Department of Media Arts, Design and Technology program encourages students to explore the boundaries of technology, narrativity and interaction to create engaging, rich, compelling and innovative stories and interactive experiences. Complementing the creative groundswell of technology-based platforms for storytelling, interactivity, and information sharing, students in the Department of Media Arts, Design and Technology are encouraged to blend traditional materials and emerging technologies in ways that encourage new innovations.
Students have the opportunity to learn as they develop their creative portfolios through a wide range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional hand-based and computer-based processes including drawing and illustration, visual composition, soft materials construction, fibers, graphic and interactive narratives, motion graphics, visual effects, animation, web design, game design, interactive and computational media, virtual and augmented reality, 3D modeling, digital fabrication, and more.
The Department of Media Arts, Design and Technology Undergraduate Program cultivates a strong foundation in:
- Critical, creative and adaptive thinking with a focus on exploration, experimentation, and contextual awareness through making;
- An ability to recognize the components of creative processes and methods that can lead to provocative creative solutions;
- A nimble facility with the methods, processes, and technologies that drive current and future art and design practices;
- A commitment to problem-solving that addresses the potential of human engagement with the designed artifact and experiences;
- An inter-disciplinary perspective that values diversity in viewpoints and integration across academic disciplines; and
- An appreciation for the reciprocal relationship between aesthetics, experience and technology.
Courses and Curriculum
The first two years of the Media Arts, Design and Technology Studio program offer an interdisciplinary foundation in the principles of Media Arts, Design and Technology. Upon completion of the foundation classes, students can focus on intermediate and advanced-level classes across a variety of creative-making platforms.
Art + Design Undergraduate Minor
The Department of Media Arts, Design and Technology believes that there is an essential need for students in a technically based research university to engage in coursework that fosters creative thinking, problem-solving, and making. To meet this need, the department offers courses to all students in the university as a minor in Art + Design. Minors are guided through a selection of courses with consultation from a design advisor.
The minor in Art + Design consists of 15 total credit hours of study, of which 6 hours must be satisfied at the basic course level. The remaining 9 hours of courses may be selected from the course list in the information provided by the Art + Design advisor. A grade of “B” or better will be required for credit in all courses in the minor in Art + Design program.
Although all efforts are made to accommodate minors, it is important for potential students to know and understand that access to Art + Design courses are based on a hierarchy where priority access goes to design majors.