Digital Culture (Certificate)

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Do you wish you could immerse yourself in exciting, innovative technologies and media while using practices of humanities and global thinking? Whether you enjoy crafting technology from scratch or designing new ways to imagine technological futures, you can create, develop and engage the technological world around you.

The digital culture certificate program in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts focuses on the creative exploration of how new media is influencing culture, or rather the way people live, learn, create and communicate.

Pursuing the digital culture certificate allows students to enhance their program of study with integrated, transdisciplinary training in creative processes and technical skills in new media with cultural applications.

The School of Arts, Media and Engineering educates the next generation of learners and empowers them with technofluency --- its development, application and implications. The School of Arts, Media and Engineering prepares students to be socially aware, critically thinking global citizens who strive to bring about positive change in a society that is increasingly shaped by new technologies.

At A Glance

Digital Culture (Certificate)

Application requirements

All students are required to meet general university admission requirements:

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Program requirements

The digital culture certificate requires 18 credit hours, of which 12 are upper division.
A minimum grade of a "C" (2.00) and an overall GPA of 3.00 is required in all courses in the certificate program. Courses in the certificate program may not be used as part of a major. All upper-division certificate coursework must be taken at ASU.
Required Courses -- 6 credit hours
Digital Culture Studies -- 6 credit hours
Digital Media - Media Arts and Design -- 6 credit hours
Generous substitution rules allow for course flexibility. Students receiving the digital culture certificate can petition to substitute up to six credit hours. Three credit hours can come from any course related to digital culture through courses offered by any ASU unit on any ASU campus, including the interdisciplinary arts and performance program on the West campus and the film and media studies program on the Tempe campus. Courses may include any on the list of related subjects and substitutions (shown above) or courses with comparable content. The other three substitution hours can be achieved through the following path: The three-hour media arts and design course requirement may be substituted with a three-hour course in the digital culture-related category.
Students who earn a digital culture certificate cannot earn a minor in digital culture.
Prerequisite courses may be needed in order to complete the requirements of this certificate.

Degree requirements

The digital culture certificate requires 18 credit hours (12 upper-division) in three areas:

digital culture studies (9)*
digital media - media arts and design (6)
capstone culminating project (3)**

*AME 111 Introduction to Digital Culture, CS (3) and AME 230 Programming for the Media Arts (3) are required.

**The required course is AME 485 Digital Culture Capstone I (3).

A minimum grade of a "C" (2.00) and an overall GPA of 3.00 is required in all classes in the certificate program. Courses in the certificate program may not be used as part of a major. All upper-division certificate course work must be taken at ASU.

Generous substitution rules allow for course flexibility. Students receiving the digital culture certificate can petition to substitute up to six credit hours. Three credit hours can come from any course related to digital culture through courses offered by any ASU unit on any ASU campus, including the interdisciplinary arts and performance program on the West campus and the film and media studies program on the Tempe campus. Courses may include any on the list of related subjects and substitutions (shown below) or courses with comparable content.

The other three substitution hours can be achieved through the following path:

  • The three-hour media arts and design course requirement may be substituted with a three-hour course in the digital culture-related category.

Depending upon a student's undergraduate program of study, prerequisite courses may be needed in order to complete the requirements of this certificate.

Enrollment requirements

Degree-seeking undergraduates or nondegree-seeking graduate students may add the digital culture certificate. Students must complete two AME courses with a "C" or higher to be eligible to add the certificate; this requirement is so that students' understanding of the discipline is sufficient to develop a pathway that best meets the proficiencies for the work they are interested in pursuing.

A student pursuing an undergraduate certificate must be enrolled as a degree-seeking student at ASU. Undergraduate certificates are not awarded prior to the award of an undergraduate degree. A student already holding an undergraduate degree may pursue an undergraduate certificate as a nondegree-seeking graduate student.

Career outlook

Students can advance their career options with a undergraduate certificate. The certificate in digital culture helps students become more marketable to employers by adding this specialization to complement their major program of study. Digital culture students go on to work in a variety of fields, some of which are mobile app design, audio production and autonomous systems.