The New York State Education Department has granted its approval for RPI’s new doctoral degree in Electronic Arts. The Institute will begin admitting students to the program for the Fall 2007 semester, and is one of only a handful of universities to offer a Ph.D. program in the emerging field.
The program will be a combination of art offerings at RPI such as computer music, video, sound arts, performance, and web-based and installation-based art, and will also include a myriad of other disciplinary areas that depend on each student’s particular focus.
Possible areas of interdisciplinary study could include computer science, cultural studies, biology, information technology, engineering, architecture, biotechnology, and cognitive science, among others.
The advanced degree will further build on RPI’s Integrated Electronic Arts program (iEAR), allowing undergraduate and graduate art students a complete interdisciplinary integration in which electronic music, computer graphics, animation, installation, and video are taught as different views of the same discipline.
“This new doctoral degree program will challenge students to combine creative experimentation with research, while preparing them to become the artists, professors, administrators, researchers, and curators of the next generation,” said President Shirley Ann Jackson.
EMPAC, scheduled to open in 2008, is intended to support the new ideas and innovations at the intersection of technology and the arts that could come out of this program.
