Media Arts

Transfer Credit
Honors College

Marie Barnas, Chair

Bowen, Chilsen, Gomez, Gordon, Griswold, Heinrich, Lewis, McNulty, Neff, O’Neill, Potter, Randol, Sultan, Trundle

The Department of Media Arts provides students with hands-on opportunities to learn by doing, and reinforces this with a foundation of history and theory in each field taught. Students are provided opportunities to develop their individually unique skills, strengths, and interests to become competent and competitive in their chosen career paths. Faculty in the department nurture a culture of collaboration and creativity and believe that understanding and imagination are the key elements of successful and rewarding careers in media and entertainment industries.

Media Arts offers the following programs of study:

Each of these programs (except for Motion Design) is also offered as a minor.

Media Arts strives to provide hands-on learning experiences whenever possible. Facilities (www.mtsu.edu/mediaarts/facilities.php) include an equipment checkout system for students with a variety of cameras and field production equipment; an Extended Reality (XR) Stage (mtsu.edu/mediaarts/xr.php) a 40-foot mobile television production lab; two production studios including a 3,000 square foot TV/film studio; video editing facilities; three high-end animation labs with a render farm; an interactive media lab with virtual and augmented reality facilities; a foley lab; traditional and digital photography facilities, two photographic studios, a student photo gallery; a student-run TV station; and a student-run FM radio station. The Baldwin Photographic Gallery resides in the department and exhibits the works of renowned photographers, students, and faculty.

The department offers a variety of cocurricular opportunities (www.mtsu.edu/mediaarts/organizations.php) for all of its students including industry-specific student organizations that make films, produce television programs, make animation, compete in eSports, experiment with VR/AR, go on photo safaris, networking events, and more. The department also offers a unique varsity team, Media Arts Productions, for live television production whose work is frequently distributed nationwide.

Each of the Media Arts programs requires admission to candidacy upon completion of 45 semester hours of university-level coursework. Specific requirements are listed by program. Many of the department’s upper-division courses require admission to Media Arts candidacy to enroll.

Transfer Credit

The Department of Media Arts will accept no more than 12 semester hours of transfer credit toward either a major and/or minor in the department. This is a maximum number of credits that will be accepted and does not constitute a guarantee that each student desiring to transfer up to 12 semester hours into the program will be granted credit for all transfer hours. Each case will be judged on an individual basis.

Transfer credit will normally be granted for theory/concept/media-history courses such as American Media and Social Institutions. Other courses that will normally be accepted include survey courses such as introduction to mass communication.

On a case-by-case basis, a production course may be accepted as an elective if the student earned a B or better in the course. Also on a case-by-case basis, requests for substitution of a required course may be accepted if there is clear evidence that the transferred course is equivalent to the required course.

Further information on departmental procedures for awarding transfer credit is available from the department.

Honors College

The Department of Media Arts periodically offers the following courses in Honors:

See Honors College for more information.