Immersive Media Design Specializations Committee

Working definition · September 2026

A path for going further.

An IMD specialization is a visible curricular path through which a student who chooses an area of practice can move from an introduction, through repeated practice, to advanced work and a body of work they can show.

The aim is to make depth possible. Students may still wander, combine practices, change direction, and discover an interest they did not arrive with. A specialization is available to students who choose it. It is not a requirement that every student select one, and it does not close the shared route to Capstone.

Going further means the next course can use what the student already knows and has already made, and still require new learning. Starting over means each course treats that interest as if it had not existed.

Six conditions

All six have to hold for a stated group of students. Select a condition in the figure to remove it. What remains may still be a real group of courses. The definition does not yet call it a specialization.

The figure is a reading of the working definition, not a judgment that any current area already meets it. Game design, on the published map, is the committee’s example of a cluster: the pieces are real, and the mechanism for going further is not yet supplied by the curriculum.

What stays outside

  • The shared spine. Collaborative production through IMDM101, IMDM227, IMDM290, IMDM390, and Senior Capstone is the common sequence. Specializations are built on it.
  • The degree tracks. The Computing B.S. and the Emerging Creatives B.A. are how students enter IMD, not areas they choose inside it.
  • Shared competencies. Collaboration, production, portfolio development, professional practice, and research run across the curriculum.
  • Facilities. A laboratory can serve a path. Access to the laboratory is not itself a specialization.

What the definition does not 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 first.
  • Whether every path must be equally complete for both degree tracks.

Those are later choices, made about paths that meet this standard or are being brought up to it.