Students perusing the Fall 2015 Schedule of Classes may have been alarmed to see more than one-third of the interactive media classes cancelled, but the bold red notification of these cancellations conveys a message opposite of what lies ahead for the department.
Pending approval by University Senate, the Department of Interactive Media will add two additional majors this fall. The current concentrations of Animation and Game Design will each become individual majors, while Web and Application Design will remain a concentration under Interactive Media.
“We know students wanted to get the classes earlier in their areas of study, and this really does it,” assistant game design professor Monica McGill said. “Instead of having to wait until second semester junior year, they’re going to be in the game design [or] animation classes immediately.”
According to Interim Chairperson Robert Rowe, interactive media majors have been informed of these changes during the department’s weekly practicum. Both majors and minors are working with their advisors to develop their fall schedules based on the new schedule of classes.
“Once it gets approved [by University Senate], however long it takes the Registrar to get those [new classes] in the system–hopefully by mid-May maybe sooner – we’ll notify students, and they can register at that time,” McGill said, adding that these updates will primarily effect sophomores and juniors rather than current freshmen who are already in the new program.
Junior interactive media major Jordon Lamping said he is “extremely excited” for the updates that give him the options of either changing his course catalogue to the new one or remaining in his already-defined program.
“I now have the ability to say what my major is and not get asked, ‘Wait – what’s interactive media?’” Lamping said. “Similarly, the curriculum changes that are happening make me wish I was coming in as a freshman this fall rather than graduating in the next year. The courses are being modernized and brought back up-to-date with competing animation schools, allowing our student body to be properly qualified and suitably prepared for the job market when they depart from Bradley.”
The department, which has been nationally recognized multiple times including the most recent No. 13 ranking on Princeton Review’s list of top undergraduate game design programs, has undergone some sort of restructuring about every two years since its inception.
“Technology and the way we use it evolves and transforms itself in rapid fashion, and the way we use it in the curriculum [and] the way we use it in our daily lives is actually a race to keep up,” Jeffrey Huberman, dean of the Slane College of Communication and Fine Arts, said. “Of all the curriculum we have in the college, [interactive media] is the one that we keep trying to change with the time and make sure that it’s up to date and that we’re on some sort of edge of it, whether it’s the cutting edge or the bleeding edge.”
Despite university-wide budgets tightening, Huberman said the department found ways to continue expanding and making improvements.
“Everybody in the university now has a heightened sense of our finances, and we have to be very careful how we manage them going into the future and the coming academic year,” Huberman said. “I can tell you that one of the principles we operate by, and I think the university does too is, ‘What there is shall go to those who are best for it.’ There’s another principle that says, ‘You can’t cut your way to excellence.’ And so one of the most fundamental principles is that you put the resources that you have into those things that are of value to the university and give you a good return on the investment. Certainly, interactive media has been that.”
These changes come following former Department Chair Jim Ferolo’s departure from the university in the fall, leaving a vacancy in the department’s top permanent position.
According to Rowe, who also serves as the chair of the search committee, two external candidates have been identified and will be brought to campus for open forums within the next few weeks.
