Projected Role of the IMD Specializations Committee

Brief for the Program Director and Interested Administrators

Faculty Working Draft
Prepared September 2026

Executive Summary

The Specializations Committee is charged with helping IMD students develop coherent areas of expertise within an interdisciplinary curriculum. Its immediate areas of focus are:

• establishing a workable framework for IMD specializations;
• developing Game Design as a pilot pathway;
• contributing to the development of an AI specialization in partnership with the Coding Committee; and
• improving project and competency continuity across courses, particularly from IMDM290 through IMDM390 and Senior Capstone.

The committee's role is not simply to identify clusters of electives. Its larger purpose is to determine how students can progressively build an identity, sustained body of work, and demonstrable area of expertise without sacrificing experimentation or the interdisciplinary character of the program.

The committee should function as a curricular strategy and synthesis group. It will map existing strengths, identify gaps, develop pilot specialization cases, and coordinate with the Coding, Portfolio, Labs, IMDM101, and Vision committees before recommending structural changes.

1. Core Charge

The committee's work begins with the following question:

How can IMD students turn a collection of courses into a coherent creative, technical, and professional trajectory?

This question connects the committee's three stated charges:

Supporting Specializations

The committee will develop a common definition and framework for specialization within IMD. This includes determining what distinguishes a meaningful specialization from an informal elective cluster, how specializations relate to the existing B.A. and B.S. tracks, and what students should be able to demonstrate upon completion.

Developing a Game Design Pathway

The committee will use Game Design as a pilot case. It will identify existing courses and competencies, clarify separate but connected B.A. and B.S. routes, identify missing shared experiences, and recommend an implementation path that may begin with advising and special topics before requiring formal curricular change.

Improving Project Continuity

The committee will examine how projects, skills, research questions, and documentation can develop across courses. The immediate structural focus is the relationship among IMDM290, IMDM390, IMDM490, and IMDM491.

The intended shift is from an implicit pattern of:

Course → Project → Grade → Abandoned Project → New Course → New Project

toward a curriculum that permits:

Foundation → Prototype → Development → Refinement → Portfolio and Capstone

Students would not be required to carry one project through the program. They would be given intentional opportunities to extend, remix, recontextualize, or professionalize prior work when doing so supports new learning.

2. Projected Responsibilities

A. Establish a Shared Specialization Framework

The committee should recommend a common structure that can be applied to Game Design, AI, and future specializations. The framework should address:

• identity and purpose;
• learning outcomes and competencies;
• introductory, practiced, advanced, and demonstrated levels;
• B.A. and B.S. routes;
• required and elective coursework;
• project-continuity opportunities;
• portfolio and Capstone evidence;
• facilities and equipment;
• faculty expertise and staffing;
• career pathways and public messaging; and
• implementation, review, and sustainability.

B. Produce a Current-State Map

The committee should map required courses and major electives against competencies such as programming, visual design, interaction design, games, AI, 3D, sound, physical computing, collaboration, production, research, professional practice, portfolio development, and facility use.

This map should distinguish the published curriculum from the enacted curriculum. Catalog descriptions establish formal expectations, while faculty and student evidence reveal what actually occurs across sections and semesters.

C. Develop Pilot Specialization Cases

The committee should use detailed cases to test the framework before recommending a broader specialization structure.

The initial cases are:

• Game Design and Interactive Systems, led by the Specializations Committee; and
• Creative AI and Intelligent Media, developed jointly with the Coding Committee because AI falls within both committees' charges.

Each case should identify existing strengths, curricular gaps, shared foundations, track-specific depth, advanced production, portfolio evidence, facility needs, faculty capacity, career claims, and possible stages of implementation.

D. Recommend a Continuity Model

The committee should clarify what students are expected to bring into and carry out of major points in the curriculum. This work should include:

• incoming competencies;
• outgoing skills and artifacts;
• project-reuse and extension policies;
• course handoff materials;
• expectations for documentation and reflection; and
• the relationship between collaborative studios and Capstone.

The committee may recommend immediate changes in syllabus language and coordination practices before formal curricular changes are pursued.

E. Identify Structural and Resource Implications

Recommendations should distinguish among:

• changes achievable through advising and communication;
• changes achievable through syllabus alignment;
• changes requiring revised course content;
• changes requiring new or revised courses;
• changes requiring facilities, software, or equipment;
• changes requiring staffing or faculty hiring; and
• changes requiring formal curriculum approval.

3. Projected Deliverables

4. Scope and Boundaries

The Specializations Committee should lead recommendations within its charge, but it should not independently decide matters owned by other committees.

The Committee Leads

• the common specialization framework;
• the Game Design pathway;
• project continuity across courses;
• specialization competency and demonstration models;
• identification of gaps affecting specialization; and
• synthesis of cross-committee inputs into coherent student pathways.

The Committee Consults or Co-Develops

• coding languages, B.A. coding expectations, and technical prerequisites with Coding;
• the AI specialization jointly with Coding;
• portfolio milestones, documentation, and IMDM351 with Portfolio;
• required facility and equipment experiences with Labs;
• introductory exposure and Art requirements with IMDM101; and
• career language and external validation with Vision.

The Committee Does Not Independently Own

• final selection of a shared coding language;
• the redesign of IMDM101;
• the role or curriculum of IMDM351;
• facilities budgets, access policies, or equipment procurement;
• the Industry Advisory Board;
• final administrative decisions concerning faculty lines, budgets, or scheduling; or
• formal curricular approval.

The committee may identify needs in these areas, but recommendations must be coordinated with the responsible committee and the appropriate faculty and administrative governance processes.

5. Relationship to the Other Committees

The committee should not wait until recommendations are complete to seek input. Cross-committee consultation should occur while proposals can still change.

6. Recommended Work Sequence

Phase 1: Define and Map

• Confirm the committee charge and boundaries.
• Define specialization, pathway, concentration, and elective cluster.
• Complete the current-state competency and course map.
• Gather faculty evidence about enacted course content and student work.

Phase 2: Develop Pilot Cases

• Apply the shared framework to Game Design.
• Work with Coding to reconcile the AI specialization case.
• Identify immediate and structural project-continuity opportunities.

Phase 3: Conduct Cross-Committee Impact Review

• Share provisional cases with Coding, Portfolio, Labs, IMDM101, and Vision.
• Record assumptions, constraints, costs, dependencies, and disagreements.
• Revise the cases or identify unresolved issues.

Phase 4: Pilot

• Use advising materials, syllabus language, special topics, project pathways, shared documentation, or limited facility pilots to test recommendations.
• Collect evidence about demand, access, workload, learning, cost, and sustainability.

Phase 5: Recommend

• Separate immediate actions from formal curricular changes.
• Present recommendations with evidence, dependencies, resource implications, and responsible parties.
• Identify which decisions require faculty discussion, Director action, administrative support, or formal approval.

7. Support Requested from the Director

The Director can make the committee's work more effective by:

1. Confirming the committee's charge, scope, authority, and relationship to the other committees.
2. Establishing AI as a formal joint workstream between Coding and Specializations.
3. Requiring each committee to identify a liaison for cross-committee communication.
4. Establishing a shared working space, reporting template, decision log, and dependency register.
5. Scheduling regular, brief committee-chair or liaison checkpoints.
6. Ensuring that affected committees review proposals before they are treated as final.
7. Clarifying how faculty feedback, administrative feasibility, and formal curricular governance will enter the process.
8. Providing access to relevant curriculum documents, enrollment information, schedules, resource data, and institutional planning.
9. Identifying administrative constraints early, including budget, staffing, facilities, and approval timelines.
10. Reserving time at a faculty retreat for shared review of findings, dependencies, and priorities.

8. Measures of Success

The committee's work should be considered successful if it produces:

• a clear and reusable definition of specialization;
• credible pathways that work within both degree tracks;
• evidence-based rather than anecdotal recommendations;
• visible connections among courses, projects, portfolios, and Capstone;
• recommendations that acknowledge staffing, resources, access, and time to degree;
• accurate and responsible career language;
• pilots that generate useful evidence before large commitments are made;
• cross-committee recommendations without avoidable duplication or conflict; and
• a transparent record of decisions, dependencies, and unresolved questions.

Success does not require the immediate creation of multiple concentrations. A strong outcome may be a clear framework, one well-supported pilot, improved continuity, and an implementation sequence the program can sustain.

9. Administrative Value

The Specializations Committee can provide the Director and program administration with more than a set of course proposals. Its work can create:

• a shared vocabulary for discussing curricular depth;
• an evidence base for staffing and hiring priorities;
• a clearer account of how program resources support student learning;
• a structure for evaluating proposed pathways before public launch;
• a way to connect curriculum, portfolio, Capstone, career messaging, and facilities; and
• a durable process for considering future specializations.

The committee's projected role is therefore both curricular and organizational. It helps the program determine not only which specializations may be desirable, but whether the curriculum, faculty, facilities, documentation practices, and career claims can support them coherently.

Working Conclusion

The Specializations Committee should be understood as the group responsible for making depth and continuity legible within IMD.

Its central task is not to narrow an interdisciplinary program. It is to ensure that students who discover an area they care about have a credible way to go further, develop stronger work, and demonstrate what they have learned.

The committee should pursue that task through current-state evidence, pilot cases, course and project continuity, cross-committee coordination, and staged recommendations that distinguish immediate improvements from long-term structural change.