On a recent Tuesday morning at LSU’s Louisiana Digital Media Center, seven students in the digital media arts and engineering master’s program sat in a glass-walled second-floor classroom, two computer monitors in front of each of them.
As Business Report details in a feature from the current issue, O’mar Finley, Brandon Bailey and Trill Noel were presenting their group project: a website for an imaginary health club. Technically, the site seems fine, but it lacks a consistent look.
“I can certainly see that it looks like three people made it, just based on color choices,” says their teacher, Marc Aubanel, who directs the Digital Media Arts & Engineering program. “At some point, rather than hashing it out, I think you kind of agreed to disagree, and went off into your corners and did your own thing.”
The team concedes that they probably should have spent more time planning.
“I think we were itching to start coding,” Finley says. “I guess the fear of not being able to finish kind of washed over us, so we just kind of jumped in as soon as possible.”
But flaws aside, the team takes pride in its finished product. During a class break after the presentation, Noel says he had to learn three programming languages to complete his portion of the project.
“We conquered the unknown,” Bailey adds.
That convergence reflects the needs of the digital media industry, where companies want workers who can collaborate with people who have different specialties, Aubanel says.
LSU began developing its Arts, Visualization, Advanced Technologies and Research, or AVATAR, initiative in about 2006. It started with an effort to recruit more faculty in various disciplines to offer more digital media-focused courses and programs, explains Robert Kooima, an assistant professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
In 2008 AVATAR was credited with helping Electronic Arts choose LSU as the future home of its first U.S.-based video game testing facility. Construction began on the 94,000-square-foot Digital Media Center, which houses the Center for Computation & Technology and EA, in 2011, and the building was officially dedicated last year.
Seven campus units now participate in the AVATAR initiative, including the schools of art and music; the departments of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, English, and mass communication; and the CCT. LSU’s digital media minor grew out of AVATAR. The minor was established in 2010, and the first graduates of the program finished in 2012. About 200 students have completed the minor so far.
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