Faculty Working Draft
Prepared September 2026
Companion to the Current-State Curriculum Map, the Faculty Validation Worksheet, and the Faculty Syllabus Continuity Guide.
Purpose
This document defines what counts as a specialization in IMD. The committee can then tell a developmental path from a cluster of related electives.
The current-state map already shows where depth exists. This document says when that depth is a specialization.
The distinction that governs this work
IMD is an interdisciplinary program. Students should be able to wander, hybridize, change direction, and discover things unexpectedly.
The aim is to make depth possible. The aim is not to eliminate experimentation or to place students on narrow tracks.
A student who finds an area they care about should have a curricular mechanism for going further in it. Going further means the next course, project, or Capstone can use what they already know and have already made. Starting over means each course treats that interest as if it had not existed.
Both kinds of student remain in view:
- The student who is still searching needs room to experiment.
- The student who has found a direction needs a way to develop it.
A specialization is that second provision. It is available to students who choose it. It is not a requirement that every student select one, and it is not a barrier to changing direction later.
This is the same commitment already stated for project continuity in the current-state map: new learning, not mandatory novelty, and no requirement that one project run through the entire program. Here that commitment is applied to an area of practice rather than to a single project.
Working definition
An IMD specialization is a visible curricular path through which a student who chooses an area of immersive-media practice can go further in it: from an introduction, through repeated practice, to advanced work and a body of work they can show.
The path is meaningful when a student can use it without private knowledge of which courses happen to fit together, and when continuing in the area develops prior work instead of discarding it.
A specialization is a mechanism inside the existing degree. It is not a second major, a placement at admission, or a requirement that a student stop experimenting in other areas.
What a specialization is for
The program's organizing premise is that students should progressively build an identity, a body of work, and an area of expertise.
A specialization is meaningful when it gives those three things a specific home:
| Aim | What the student can do |
|---|---|
| Identity | Name the area of immersive-media practice they are developing, including a hybrid if that is the real shape of the work. |
| Body of work | Show more than one stage of work in that area, or one body of work developed across stages. |
| Expertise | Take on a harder problem in the area than they could at the point of entry, with less dependence on step-by-step instruction. |
A list of courses can sit on a transcript and still leave all three unsupported. The student then has credits in a neighborhood of the field and no mechanism for going further.
An elective cluster is not yet a specialization
IMD already contains groups of related courses, faculty expertise, facilities, and project types. The current-state map calls several of these latent specializations: game design, extended reality, artificial intelligence, interaction design, physical computing, 3D and technical art, sound, and creative research.
A cluster is real curricular material. It becomes a specialization only when a student who cares about that material can find it, practice it, advance it, and show it without starting over at each step.
| A cluster | A specialization |
|---|---|
| Related courses exist somewhere in the university. | Those courses are arranged so later work uses earlier work. |
| A student may discover the combination. | A student can see the path. |
| Advanced work depends on a particular elective, instructor, or project. | Advanced work is taught on purpose for students on the path. |
| Capstone can be about the topic if the student chooses. | Earlier courses prepare that demonstration. |
| Depth is whatever the student assembles. | Depth is something the curriculum makes possible. |
Individual students will keep assembling their own routes. That does not show that a specialization exists. A specialization exists when the curriculum, not only the determined student, supplies the route.
Minimum conditions
All six conditions have to hold. A missing condition is a reason to call the area a cluster, an interest, or a track foundation, and to say which condition is missing.
1. Findable
A student can name the area and see how to enter it, continue it, and leave it.
The path may be a short public description, an advising map, or syllabus language that points to the next course. It may not depend on knowing which faculty member to ask.
Students may still arrive by wandering. Findability means the path is there when they decide to stay.
2. Developmental
The path has an introduction, repeated practice, and advanced work, in an order a student can follow.
One strong course is a contribution. It is not a specialization. Repeated practice means the student applies the area more than once, with feedback, rather than touching it inside a single assignment.
The competency scale in the current-state map is the measure: Introduced, Practiced, Advanced, and, when the path reaches public work, Demonstrated. A level that occurs only when a particular project happens to require it does not yet fill that stage of the path.
3. Open to a stated group of IMD students
The description states who can complete the path: both degree tracks, the Computing B.S. only, the Emerging Creatives B.A. only, or both tracks by different routes.
A path that is real for one track is still a specialization if the program says so. A path that students can enter only by special permission, an unscheduled topic, or a seat they may not get is still a cluster.
Changing direction remains possible. Entering a specialization does not close the shared IMDM sequence, and leaving one does not strand the student without a route to Capstone.
4. Continuous
A student going further can extend, remix, recontextualize, or professionalize earlier work in the area.
The next course requires new learning. It does not ask the student to discard the previous stage in order to begin, and it does not accept the previous stage unchanged.
Continuity applies to the area of practice. It does not require the same project, team, or technology to survive every semester. A student who changes direction should be able to carry methods, research, assets, and documentation into the new direction when those materials serve the new learning.
5. Shown in a body of work
The path produces work a student can preserve and, at the advanced end, show in public or professional form.
That showing will often be Senior Capstone. It can also be a public project in an advanced studio, exhibition, or equivalent culminating artifact. The earlier courses have to prepare it. A Capstone that happens to take up the topic, with no prior path, demonstrates the student's initiative. It does not demonstrate that a specialization is in the curriculum.
The body of work is the evidence of depth: files, documentation, and an account of what the student can now do in the area. One isolated exercise is not that body.
6. Part of IMD, and taught on purpose
The path deepens immersive-media practice and can be carried by the shared sequence of collaborative production, research, and public presentation.
Courses from Computer Science, Studio Art, or elsewhere may supply part of the depth. They count toward an IMD specialization when IMD coursework uses them and when students can bring that work forward into IMD studios or Capstone. A sequence that never meets the shared spine is depth in another program.
Faculty are responsible for the advanced level. Special topics and independent study may extend a path. They cannot be the only place the advanced level exists.
What stays outside the definition
Three kinds of depth matter to IMD and are not, by this definition, specializations.
The shared spine. Collaborative immersive production, running through IMDM101, IMDM227, IMDM290, IMDM390, and Senior Capstone, is the common sequence. Specializations are built on it. Naming the spine as a specialization would treat the program's shared identity as one option among others.
The degree tracks. The Computing B.S. and the Emerging Creatives B.A. are the program's broad structures of technical depth and artistic and conceptual depth. They are how students enter IMD, not areas they choose inside it.
Shared program competencies. Collaboration, production, portfolio development, professional practice, and research are expectations across the curriculum. A student develops them while specializing. They are not separate specializations.
Facilities follow the same rule. A lab can be necessary to a path. Access to the lab is not itself a specialization.
Room to wander, combine, and change
The definition is meant to protect these freedoms.
Wandering. Early coursework can serve discovery. A student does not need to declare an area in order to begin, and a course may contribute to several possible areas, as the syllabus guide already suggests.
Hybrid work. A student may combine areas. Game work can be deeply sonic. An XR project can be a critical research project. A hybrid still needs somewhere to go further. If both areas are to count as depth, each needs the mechanism, or one needs the mechanism and the other is a contributing practice the student can name. A hybrid is not a reason to leave both areas as unstructured clusters.
Changing direction. A student may leave an area. Earlier work remains material for the next direction when it supports new learning. The failure mode is a curriculum that can only recognize a new interest by throwing away the last one.
Uneven timing. Some students will find a direction in the first year. Others will find it in IMDM390 or at the start of Capstone. A late start can still be a specialization if enough of the path remains to go further before the public demonstration. A topic chosen for the first time in IMDM491 is a Capstone subject. It is late for the path this definition describes.
Illustration: game design in the published curriculum
This reading uses only the published map. Faculty validation may change it.
Game design is already present. CMSC425 offers advanced technical work. IMDM350 offers critical context for game culture. IMDM290, IMDM390, special topics, independent study, and Capstone can host game projects. Visual design, sound, interaction, 3D, and computation exist elsewhere.
Under this definition, that is a cluster:
| Condition | Published-map reading |
|---|---|
| Findable | A student has to assemble the pieces. |
| Developmental | There is no shared introduction or repeated practice. Advanced work sits in an elective and in selected projects. |
| Open to a stated group | Technical depth is tied to Computing electives. The B.A. route into game practice is not described. |
| Continuous | Nothing in the published sequence asks game work to be carried from one course to the next. |
| Shown in a body of work | Demonstration happens when a student chooses a game Capstone. |
| Part of IMD, and taught on purpose | The pieces can meet in IMD studios. No IMD course is responsible for the advanced level of the path. |
Game design can become a specialization. The published curriculum does not yet provide the mechanism for going further.
The same test should be applied to extended reality, artificial intelligence, interaction design, physical computing, 3D and technical art, sound, and creative research before any of them is treated as a specialization. Some may already meet more of the conditions than games. The current-state map is the evidence base. This definition is the standard for reading it.
How the committee uses the definition
For each candidate area, record one of three judgments:
- Specialization. All six conditions hold for a stated group of students.
- Cluster. Real courses, expertise, or facilities are present, and at least one condition does not hold. Name the missing condition.
- Not a candidate. The area is the shared spine, a degree track, or a competency the whole program shares.
Use the validated course sheets, once they are returned, for the developmental, continuity, and evidence conditions. Use the published map only where validation is still open, and mark those cells as provisional.
| Candidate area | Who can complete it | Findable | Developmental | Open | Continuous | Shown | Part of IMD | Judgment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A condition is met only when it is true of the curriculum a stated group of students actually encounters. A condition is not met by an outstanding Capstone, a single section, or an independent study that a few students were able to arrange.
What this definition does not decide
The definition is a standard for recognition. It does not yet decide:
- whether a specialization appears on the transcript;
- how many specializations the program should offer;
- a minimum number of credits;
- which clusters should be built out first;
- or whether every specialization must be equally complete for both degree tracks.
Those are later choices. They should be made about paths that already meet this definition, or about clusters the faculty intend to bring up to it.
Syllabus language can make a path more findable and can authorize students to carry work forward. The continuity guide is the place for that language. Language does not by itself create the missing course, seat, or agreement between instructors.
Summary
IMD should remain a place where students can wander, combine practices, change direction, and discover an interest they did not arrive with. The purpose of a specialization is to make depth possible for the student who finds an area they want to pursue. It is a way of going further, not a track that closes experiment.
An IMD specialization is a visible path from an introduction, through repeated practice, to advanced work and a body of work the student can show. Along that path, later courses use what the student already knows and has already made, and they require new learning. Related electives, faculty expertise, and facilities are a cluster until that path exists. A determined student can assemble a cluster. A specialization exists only when the curriculum supplies the route.
Six conditions have to hold, for a stated group of students:
- Findable. The student can see how to enter, continue, and leave.
- Developmental. Introduction, repeated practice, and advanced work are in order.
- Open. The program states who can complete it, and changing direction still leaves a route to Capstone.
- Continuous. Earlier work in the area can be developed, and unchanged resubmission is not enough.
- Shown. The path prepares a public body of work and leaves evidence of it.
- Part of IMD. The shared studio sequence can carry it, and faculty teach the advanced level on purpose.
The shared production sequence, the Computing and Emerging Creatives degrees, and program-wide competencies such as collaboration are the ground of that path. They are not specializations. A lab can serve a path. Access to the lab is not itself one.
On the published map, game design is the example of a cluster: the pieces are real, and the mechanism for going further is not yet there. The same test applies to the other latent areas. The committee's judgment on each is specialization, cluster, or not a candidate. Transcript labels, credit minimums, and which clusters to build first are later decisions, made about paths that meet this standard or are being brought up to it.