Press Release: IU Media School announces new degrees
| Contact: | Ryan Piurek Director, Strategic Communications IU Communications 812-855-5393 rpiurek@iu.edu |
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana University’s new Media School took a major step Friday when the IU Board of Trustees approved new undergraduate degrees in media and game design.
The new degrees join the existing Bachelor of Arts in journalism, and all three undergraduate degrees will share a common foundation of courses on creating, understanding and managing 21st-century media.
This common core will allow students to pair media skills with strong liberal arts and subject area depth in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The game design degree represents an important collaborative effort with the School of Informatics and Computing. The degrees will allow students to complete double concentrations within The Media School or the College of Arts and Sciences or pursue additional credentials offered by other schools at IU Bloomington.
“The development of these degrees shows the school innovating curricula for converged media,” said James Shanahan, incoming dean of The Media School. “These programs leverage our intellectual resources in ways that will greatly multiply opportunities and educational paths for our students.”
Students seeking the degree in media will study media history, management and ethics, among other topics. The program will allow them to hone specific skills in areas such as advertising, cinema studies and production, media science, and media technologies and culture.
The degree in game design was developed by Edward Castronova, a professor in The Media School, in consultation with faculty members in the School of Informatics and Computing. It emphasizes the creative interaction between the age-old arts of storytelling and illustration with powerful new media platforms and state-of-the-art animation technologies.
Students will learn how to design, produce and publish games, Web apps and other interactive media forms, developing skills in programming, storytelling, sound and animation.
“These new degrees show the power and creativity unleashed when we create paths that let students unite the liberal arts and the professions,” said Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel. “Our bicentennial strategic plan has focused on creating these new pathways, and the students who walk them are the real beneficiaries. Kudos to the faculty for their imaginative approach to these new opportunities.”
The degrees move now to the Indiana Commission on Higher Education for approval and, if approved, will begin this fall.
The Media School was launched in 2014 as a result of a merger of the School of Journalism and the Department of Telecommunications and Department of Communication and Culture. It is part of the College of Arts and Sciences.