by Aaron Butts
With classes in full swing, students are now starting to grasp all the changes that have taken place on campus. Not only have there been administrative and physical improvements to the University, but there have also been academic improvements.
This semester Capital is welcoming a brand new minor to its list of offered minors: Digital Design.
This new program has been eight years in the making. Professor Jeff Shaw of the art department, a Capital graduate himself (class of ’72), noticed that there was something missing from the arts at Capital when he was first hired here.
“The art department needed some digital courses,” Shaw said.Schools all around the country have embraced focuses on digital design and have incorporated it into many different fields; however, Capital had yet to create a unified program for which to facilitate it.
“We have all these existing courses and so we’re really just trying to concentrate them into a minor,” Shaw said, explaining that Capital already had a series of classes offered that focus on different aspects of digital media and design.
According to Shaw, Digital design isn’t something that is particular to a certain major, but rather is something that is shared between departments that people from many different majors can benefit from, not just art students.
“I’m trying to build it so that it is art oriented, but you don’t need to have a high degree of artistic background,” Shaw said. “We’re not trying to be like the Columbus College of Art and Design. I want it to be user friendly so that if your major is heading you towards becoming an entrepreneur or something you can benefit from the skills obtained in these courses.”
According to Shaw, the future applications for the skills learned in this minor are nearly limitless, as our society is becoming increasingly more technologically complex and more disciplines are incorporating digital design into their fields.
Capital has sought to modernize itself and has invested in a series of new computers that will be going into the basement of Huber-Spielman Hall. “It will be open next semester,” Shaw said.
The lab itself will have several brand new Mac computers with state of the art design software installed. The lab itself won’t be open until next semester, but the minor is already available for students.
Provost Richard Ashbrook has been instrumental in the planning process. He and Sharon Croft, head of the communication department, worked with Shaw in moving forward with this new step in Capital academics.
According to Shaw, the approval of the Digital Design minor is a part of Ashbrook’s work to make the different disciplines of the university more inter-connected. “He’s really big on programs that cross departments,” Shaw said.
Ashbrook mentioned in a recent interview that this new computer lab is yet another planned improvement on the campus with the several that have already taken place over the summer. “[The new Mac lab] will have versatile and modern technology, and software that will accommodate the specialized uses for convergent media,” Ashbrook said.
Before this project, finding a space for students to study graphic design regularly was difficult.
“I had to battle to get a lab in Battelle.” Shaw said, and he explained that when this idea was first being formed before Capital became a unified college, it was harder to gain access to these labs that were in different departments.
Recently the art department has been working with the conservatory’s own Mac lab, but even that was also a bit tricky. “The Mac lab was always exclusive to the Conservatory so that art students couldn’t fully utilize them. It wasn’t that they weren’t welcomed, but that they could never really take video courses, and so I was interested in using computers to develop studio art.”
The minor incorporates thirteen different classes in Art, Electronic Media and Film, English, and Music, requiring a total of 22 credit hours to graduate.
A complete course listing is available to see what specific courses there will be, but examples are ART 264 (Digital Computer Imaging), EMF 433 (Advanced Video Production), Music 215 (Multimedia and Web Development), and ENGL 321 (Layout and Design).
With minors such as this one and classes that transcend disciplines, departments are more able and willing to work together to accommodate new ways of learning to take place on campus.
Shaw points out that while it is a small victory to finally have his dream of a Digital Design minor come true, he has bigger and better plans for it in the future and hopes to one day develop it into a unique major that the university can offer.
“I just think it has so much potential,” Shaw said. “It’s art for art’s sake, but it’s also such a useful skill. And there are plenty of people who want to take art classes but don’t because they don’t think they can draw or paint, so this opens the door for that.”
To find out more about the Digital Design minor, contact professor Shaw at jshaw3@capital.edu.
abutts@capital.edu
