Master’s Degree Pursuit update #2
So, last week, I had a meeting involving several people from Drexel’s Biomedical Engineering/Science faculty, including the director, as well as the director from Digital Media and others from the College of Media Arts and Design. They discussed a possible curriculum merge for the two disciplines for those interested in pursuing a joint focus.
At the suggestion of the Biomedical Science graduate advisor, I think they’re going to make a concentration of Digital Media as “Biomedical Science”, rather than a joint master’s, to lessen the red tape of Faculty Senate approval and what not (which can take a year plus). So while not as cool as having a Dual M.S. in Digital Media and Biomedical Science, I guess I can think of some cool way to name it. “Master’s of Science in Digital Media with Pseudo-Telekinetic Powers… In a game.”
Also, was suggested some classes that the DIGM’s would find beneficial, such as:
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Medical Sciences
Neuro study
Cognitive Psychology
Biomechanics
BCI/Psychology
Brain Imaging
Education
My only problem with their suggestion is that they take the 12 directed electives in the DIGM master’s and turn that into Biomed classes, makes sense, but then they take the New Media Project (9 credits, a “practice” thesis project, if you will) and then the Thesis Development classes (9 credits as well) and turn those into Biomed Classes. I want to have the New Media Project for a chance to synthesize these two fields, as well as get credits for thesis development, as I do not want 3 grad classes on top of a thesis. This plan removes no DIGM classes I find no use for, and removes classes I want to take. So if they’re all about custom-tailoring, then we’ll need to tweak that a bit.
Now I need to sign up for the grad program and then try to get an assistanship somehow, because without that, I don’t know how I’ll be able to afford this. And have been going through a lot of stress, so need to decide if this is what I really want. Them being all about it was really intimidating and sort of an eye-opener of, “Shit, this could really happen.”
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Pretty natch, I think, that they were JOing all over you. They pretty much go about their careers and just hope a student will come along and do something like Lazy Brains.
I would definitely keep stepping on them about the grad classes. It could very well be an impasse, because surely there are profs who want you to be taking their classes, regardless of how beneficial it is for you in the end, but demonstrating the drive by declaring what it is that you want could help them take you even more seriously. That can’t hurt at all, even if you end up losing this particular battle.
Once again, huge congratulations, man.
Now that you mention it, how can we even DO decent HCI without having gone through cog psych classes as a foundation? Shit.. I hope I didn’t just waste 5 years of my life.