New Media
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
The New Media major teaches skills that creative people need to succeed in the 21st century. The internet, social software, hand-held and wearable devices, touch and gestural interfaces, the Internet of Things, and virtual reality offer unprecedented opportunities to create useful, delightful, and engaging experiences. In this major, you’ll get deep and far-ranging skills along with a broad understanding of the social and economic impact of cutting-edge technologies.
All first-year majors and transfer students share a common experience in the first year and a half. Five required courses cover such topics as the history and definition of new media, computer programming for interactive environments, and design techniques, such as digital image manipulation.
Students who pass the portfolio review in the second year become new media majors, and are eligible participate in project-based courses. To encourage both breadth and depth, majors are required to concentrate their studies in two of the following five sequences: digital reporting and documentary production; information and interaction design; digital narrative and hypertext; time-based art and design; and creative networks. Majors add to their portfolio every year until graduation. This process culminates senior year in a two- semester capstone course, in which students conceive, design and build an ambitious new media project of their choosing.
New Media students learn to use emerging digital technologies to solve problems at the horizon of human experience. If you’re interested in wielding expressive technologies and networked communication to alter how we relate to each other and to the world around us, this curriculum’s melding of critical perspective with hands-on practice will help you become an articulate and original thinker, proficient in a range of technologies.
New media graduates work as designers, artists, photographers, audio and video producers, animators, programmers and professional writers. Their services are in demand throughout society, including print, broadcast and online media; education; government; business; entertainment; and the fine arts. Graduates of the New Media Department have taken leadership roles in companies such as Adobe and Apple, and have taught in prestigious research posts at schools such as the University of California.
Many new media majors and students from throughout campus find employment in the New Media and Internet Technology Laboratory (ASAP), an experimental learning environment that employs collaborative, multidisciplinary problem-solving in the application of new media to various communication and instructional endeavors. The department’s Still Water lab researches and builds social networks in support of creativity, sustainability and cultural preservation, while the New Media Society hosts hands-on technical workshops and presents student projects at such venues as the prestigious Ars Electronica Festival in Austria.