Bachelor of Arts for Digital Arts and Culture Likely Coming Soon to UWM

Around 20 faculty members attended the Academic Policies and Curriculum Committee meeting in Holton 241, to discuss the major changes coming to the DAC program. It is anticipated that, in the upcoming fall of 2020 semester, Digital Arts and Culture will be offered as a Bachelor of Arts degree.  

The faculty members voted for the motion to approve the proposal of DAC being offered as a Bachelor of Arts degree. 

Another topic that was also briefly touched upon in the meeting was the temporary suspension of admissions to the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies Department’s Master’s program due to the lack of faculty. 

“This does not dismantle the program; it merely suspends admissions,” said Assistant Dean Mike Darnell. 

The JAMS MA program is required to submit an official document of inaction to applicants and the department. Graduate students who have applied will be refunded their application fees. 

The committee estimated that the DAC change will be effective as soon as the proposal has been approved by the Board of Regents and Faculty Senate. Darnell led the meeting. 

“The only potential anticipated problem is that after the proposal goes through the Board of Regents generally it is returned and marked with a bunch of comments,” Darnell said. “The comments are not punitive in any way shape or form. They are designed to get the proposal fully done so it will have the easiest path at Board of Regents.”

The process of approval is time consuming due to the many steps that are involved. Faculty are confident and hopeful that it will be approved. JAMS coordinator of Digital Arts and Culture, Marc Tasman attended the meeting. 

Tasman explained that most students with DAC degrees end up in the media field. 

“They can work in social media marketing or design work since it is interdisciplinary; students are taking classes, so they have an understanding about how media systems work,” Tasman said. 

Currently, Digital Arts and Culture is offered as a certificate and a multi-disciplinary major. After the changes, DAC would be offered as a standalone degree. DAC is merged with various courses such as arts, humanities, social sciences, and information studies.  

DAC was created in 2001 and was available to students as a CIM major since spring of 2015. 

“We are assuming going forward DAC majors will be split into two groups; those who are solely majoring in DAC and the other half essentially will be double majoring in DAC,” Darnell said. 

The options of the two learning tracks were created when the committee was setting up the financials for the program. 

“Because of DAC’s interdisciplinary nature, it makes it easier for students to double major in it,” Tasman said. 

There is a separate standalone advisory committee for the DAC program which consists of faculty from the JAMS Department, English Department, and Peck school of the Arts. 

“Because it is such an interdisciplinary group, the retention data was taken from across campus for the undergraduate side,” said Darnell. “The retention between year one and year two for any cohort is about 70 percent; going forward it is about 50 for that same cohort. 

The retention data for the program included existing students and the estimate for new students. This will assist in predicting further numbers for the program in the future. 

According to Tasman, currently there are 5/8 students in the major and 3/8 students in the certificate. 

“High school students are not thinking that they are going to grow up and be a DAC major; rather they will come for journalism or art, so students will come late into this major,” said Darnell. “But these are the actual numbers that we have right now that is a reflective of that.” 

During the meeting faculty discussed that the students who typically come into the DAC major are looking for more flexible options in courses rather than the traditional disciplinary ones.