Studio sequence · IMD Specializations

Faculty Working Draft
Prepared September 2026

Analysis of the shared studio sequence. Companion to the Current-State Curriculum Map, the specialization definition, and the Faculty Syllabus Continuity Guide.

This document reads the published curriculum. It does not yet report what instructors require in practice. Those answers belong on the faculty validation sheets for IMDM290, IMDM390, IMDM490, and IMDM491.

The issue

The program describes one shared progression and enforces a shorter one.

Students in both degree tracks are required to take IMDM290, IMDM390, IMDM490, and IMDM491. The four-year plans place them in that order: Collaborative Studio I in the second year, Collaborative Studio II in the third year, and the two-semester Capstone in the fourth. The Department of Art describes the same shape. Fall of the second and third years is for developing technical and artistic skill. The spring of each of those years is a collaborative project. The fourth year is a significant work of the student's own design.

Registration does not require that order. IMDM390 requires IMDM290. IMDM490 also requires IMDM290, together with at least 86 credits and standing in the major. IMDM490 does not require IMDM390. IMDM491 requires only IMDM490.

IMDM290 is therefore a fork, not a single step in a line:

IMDM290 → IMDM390

and

IMDM290 → IMDM490 → IMDM491

A student can begin Senior Capstone without Collaborative Studio II. Because IMDM390 is spring-only on the current four-year plans and IMDM490 is fall-only, the student who starts Capstone first will often be taking IMDM390 during Capstone II rather than before Capstone I. The degree still requires the course. The course no longer prepares the Capstone.

That is the continuity issue. It is a break in preparation, and it is a break in the possibility of going further with work already made.

Three published accounts of the same courses

These accounts are all current. They do not say the same thing about order.

Account	What it establishes	Where IMDM390 sits
Degree requirements	Both tracks must complete IMDM290, IMDM390, IMDM490, and IMDM491.	A required course. No semester is specified.
Four-year plans and the department's description of the core	The advised sequence is second-year studio, third-year studio, fourth-year Capstone. IMDM290 and IMDM390 are identified as spring courses. IMDM490 is fall of the fourth year. IMDM491 is the following spring. On the Emerging Creatives plan, IMDM390 is also a third-year benchmark.	The studio that precedes Capstone.
Registration rules	IMDM390 requires a C- or better in IMDM290. IMDM490 requires a C- or better in IMDM290, major standing, and 86 credits. IMDM491 requires a C- or better in IMDM490.	Not a condition of entering Capstone.

The 86-credit rule makes Capstone a senior course. It does not make IMDM390 the course before it. A student with enough prior credit, a heavy load, or a missed spring of IMDM390 can reach 86 credits and IMDM290 first.

The offering pattern narrows the possible orders without repairing the rule. A student cannot take IMDM390 and IMDM490 in the same semester if one remains spring-only and the other fall-only. The orders the rules allow are:

The advised order. IMDM290, then IMDM390, then IMDM490, then IMDM491.
Capstone started first. IMDM290, then IMDM490, with IMDM390 in a later spring. That spring is often the IMDM491 semester, the last semester of the degree. Collaborative Studio II then runs concurrent with Capstone II and the public showcase. The senior project has already been defined. Skills learned in IMDM390 during that semester have no later course in which to enter the project or to be shown as advanced understanding. IMDM491 can also be delayed until IMDM390 is done.
Capstone finished beside or before the missing studio. IMDM390 is still required for the degree, so it is completed sometime before graduation. Nothing requires it to be completed before the Capstone project is defined.

How often students use the second and third orders is an advising and enrollment question. The published rules are what make those orders possible.

What each course is positioned to do

The catalog assigns these courses different jobs. The assignments below are readings of those descriptions, not yet of syllabi.

IMDM290, Collaborative Studio I: Image + Time. Teams make conceptually driven work from image, animation, video, audio, generative media, and shared assets. The course is the last shared studio that Capstone is allowed to assume. Its prerequisites are IMDM227 and ARTT255, so students arrive from computational media and digital art and design, by different routes on the two tracks.

IMDM390, Collaborative Studio II: Experiential Computing. Teams move from small sketches to larger experiential works that a participant can inhabit. The catalog emphasizes research goals, production, critique, display, and documentation, and it describes the course as moving beyond the technical application of software. This is the shared studio whose published job is closest to Capstone: scale, research, public form, and a record of the work.

IMDM490, Senior Capstone I. Students research, design, and prototype a substantial project, and they practice the organization and production planning that a longer project requires. The catalog says they apply design and technical skills acquired in previous courses. It does not say which previous courses, and the prerequisite identifies only IMDM290.

IMDM491, Senior Capstone II. Students continue that project, respond to critique, exhibit it, and promote it. This is the one transition in the sequence that the registration rule treats as a continuation. IMDM491 does not start a new project. It carries the IMDM490 project into public form.

The developmental claim implied by the titles and the four-year plan is:

collaborative production at the scale of image and time → experiential work at a larger scale, with research and documentation → a year-long project that is planned and then exhibited

The registration claim is:

collaborative production at the scale of image and time → a year-long project that is planned and then exhibited, with the experiential studio required somewhere in the degree

Where continuity already holds

Two links are real in the published curriculum.

IMDM290 is required before IMDM390. Collaborative Studio II cannot be taken as a first studio. Students who take the courses in the advised order have at least the image, time, collaboration, and asset-management experience named in IMDM290.

IMDM490 is required before IMDM491. Capstone is the program's existing model of going further rather than starting over. The second semester continues a project that has already been researched, designed, and prototyped. New learning in IMDM491 is refinement, exhibition, and promotion, not a new premise.

The break is upstream of that pair. The program knows how to require continuation across two semesters. It uses that requirement inside Capstone and does not use it between Collaborative Studio II and Capstone I.

What the bypass changes

A student who enters IMDM490 from IMDM290 has completed a team studio in image and time. A student who enters after IMDM390 has also completed a team studio that the catalog charges with scaling a sketch, defining research, displaying the work, and documenting it.

Those are the capacities IMDM490 then asks students to use on a longer and more independent project. If IMDM390 has not happened, IMDM490 has to build them while it is also supposed to produce a viable plan and prototype for IMDM491. The first Capstone semester absorbs the missing studio, or the student meets the demand without that preparation.

When the missing studio arrives in the IMDM491 semester, the loss is sharper than a missing prerequisite. Collaborative Studio II, Capstone II, and the public showcase occupy the same last semester. Research, scale, display, and documentation taught in IMDM390 are being learned while the senior project is finished and shown. They have no subsequent course in which to transfer into that project, or into what the showcase can treat as advanced understanding.

The loss is shared across tracks, and the substitute preparation is not. Between IMDM290 and the advised semester of IMDM390, Computing students are in IMDM327 and the computer-science core. Emerging Creatives students are in IMDM350 and advanced digital-media coursework. That year is valuable depth. It is not a shared rehearsal for Capstone. IMDM390 is the last common studio the plans put in front of the senior project. When it is not in front, the last common studio is IMDM290, a year or more earlier, and the two tracks arrive at Capstone from different bodies of advanced work.

None of this shows that every student who skipped IMDM390 is unprepared. Track courses, special topics, and prior projects may have supplied the missing practice. The curriculum does not guarantee that they have.

Course order and work carried forward

Requiring IMDM390 before IMDM490 would fix the order. It would not by itself let a student go further with work already underway.

IMDM290 and IMDM390 are team courses. The project that leaves the studio may belong to the team more than to any one student. Capstone asks for a substantial project the student can carry through a year of research, prototyping, exhibition, and promotion. A team archive is not yet that project. An individual record can be: a role credit, the portion the student can continue, a research question, a prototype, documentation, and a statement of what new learning the next stage requires.

The catalog requires none of those handoffs. Nothing in the prerequisite line tells IMDM390 to receive a defined outcome from IMDM290, or tells IMDM490 to receive a defined outcome from IMDM390. A student can complete the courses in the advised order and still be asked to abandon the previous project and begin again. A student can also be forbidden from continuing it, or be allowed to resubmit it unchanged. The published curriculum is silent on all three.

The continuity the committee has been using separates those failures. Going further means the next course can use prior work in the same area of practice. New learning is still required. The same project need not survive every semester. Methods, research, assets, and documentation can travel even when the project does not. Starting over means the prior studio leaves nothing the next course is built to use.

Under that distinction, the sequence has two different problems:

Problem	What is missing	What fixing only the prerequisite would do
Order	IMDM490 can start without IMDM390.	Put the experiential studio before the project is defined.
Handoff	No required artifact or decision moves from one course to the next.	Leave each course free to start from zero, or to accept an unchanged project.
Transfer	IMDM390 can occupy the last semester, concurrent with IMDM491 and the public showcase. Skills learned then have no later course in which to enter the senior project or the demonstration of advanced understanding.	Place the experiential studio before the project is defined, so the showcase semester can use what Studio II taught.

Capstone already solves the handoff internally. IMDM491 receives the project IMDM490 planned. The open question is what, if anything, IMDM490 receives from the studios before it.

What the descriptions imply could cross

These are implications of the published roles, for faculty to confirm or correct from the courses as taught. They are not a proposed set of new assignments.

From IMDM290 into IMDM390. Collaborative practice, production with image and time-based media, and asset management. An individual record of the student's contribution, distinct from the team submission, is what a later team or a Capstone could actually use. The validation sheet for IMDM290 asks whether such a record exists.

From IMDM390 into IMDM490. Experience moving from a sketch to a larger experiential work. Practice in research, critique, display, and documentation. A direction the student could continue: a question, a technical or formal problem, a prototype, or a role they can now carry without the original team. The syllabus guide already suggests a future-development statement at the end of IMDM390. The catalog does not require it, and IMDM490 does not require the course that would produce it.

From IMDM490 into IMDM491. A project, a prototype, and a production plan. This handoff is the one the prerequisite already names.

From IMDM290 directly into IMDM490. Whatever IMDM290 actually leaves in an individual student's hands, plus whatever the track courses supplied. The experiential step, the documentation practice, and the display practice described for IMDM390 are not on this path unless some other course has required them.

Faculty validation is what can replace these implications with the assignments students are actually held to. Until those sheets are returned, the analysis stops at the published structure.

Why this matters for depth

The specialization definition asks for a path on which a student who has found a direction can go further, and on which Capstone can show a body of work the earlier courses prepared.

The advised sequence could be that path's shared ending: try the work in IMDM290, develop it as an experiential project in IMDM390, and take a further stage public in Capstone. The registration rule cuts the middle out of the requirement. Development in the area then depends on the student choosing the advised order, and on instructors independently agreeing to receive the earlier work. A Capstone topic chosen with no prior studio in that area remains possible, and for some students it will be the right discovery. It is a weak mechanism for the student who was already going somewhere.

The same break limits hybrids and changes of direction. A student changing areas can still carry methods and materials forward when a later course is designed to use them. If each studio starts blank, a change of direction and a continuation are treated the same way. Both begin again.

What remains to be learned from the courses

The structure above is visible without syllabi. These facts are not:

How often students enter IMDM490 without IMDM390, and how often the two meet in the same spring.
Whether benchmarks are used as advising pressure, a registration hold, or a plan on paper.
What IMDM290 and IMDM390 actually require every student to leave with, and whether any of it is an individual handoff.
Whether Capstone faculty can tell, in the first weeks of IMDM490, who has done IMDM390.
Which 390-level expectations IMDM490 currently reteaches, and which it assumes.
Whether team projects yield anything one student is allowed to continue.
Whether students are encouraged, merely permitted, or discouraged from developing earlier studio work in the next course.

The validation sheets for these four courses are written to collect that evidence. The program-level synthesis then compares the four transitions: into IMDM290's successors, from IMDM290 to IMDM390, from IMDM290 to IMDM490, and from IMDM390 to IMDM490.

The decision the evidence is for

The published curriculum supports two conclusions now.

IMDM390 is part of the degree and part of the advised path into Capstone. It is not part of the rule for starting Capstone. Students may therefore define the senior project before they have done the studio the program places immediately before it.

Completing the courses in the advised order still does not, on paper, carry work forward. Order and handoff are separate. A bridge would be both: IMDM390 done before the Capstone project is defined, and a named individual outcome that IMDM490 is built to receive. The outcome has to demand new learning. It does not have to be the same project.

Whether to build that bridge, and what should cross it, is a faculty decision. This analysis says what the current rules and descriptions do. It does not choose the repair.

Continuity from IMDM290 to IMDM390 to Senior Capstone