The boundaries between design, communication, and technology are blurring to create new career possibilities in the digital age, and the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida’s College of the Arts is at the forefront of this shift.
This was illustrated during the spring, when students in the program packed their warmest winter gear and boarded a bus from the Swamp to spend a “snowy day in the mountains” in Tampa, Florida. There, they learned how to digitally create a chilly landscape in a warm southern city, blending their classroom learning with hands-on experiences in virtual production.
Though not known for its tundra, Tampa is home to a 35,000-square-foot virtual production studio operated by Vū Technologies. Vū (pronounced “view”) specializes in all-in-one production for filmmaking and metaverse/immersive experiences, using digitally rendered 3D visuals as the backdrop for live-action storytelling. The Vū client roster includes Apple, Disney, ESPN, and the NFL, and Gators fans will recognize SwampVū productions for UF Athletics.
“We wanted to do something that was not native to Florida to sell the fact that ‘Hey, you can do this anywhere,’” said Nathan Lontz, a spring 2024 Digital Worlds alum and founding officer of the institute’s new UF Virtual Production Club, who designed the Florida snow day at Vū. “Just a couple college students throwing together a snowy environment and seeing how fantastic it looked on the screen."
The field trip, spearheaded by Digital Worlds lecturer Darius Brown and the Virtual Production Club, gave UF students a chance to test-drive their own creations on Vū’s state-of-the-art virtual production stages. In virtual production, green screens are replaced by high-resolution LED volume walls that display visual environments created on Unreal Engine — a 3D computer graphics engine that was developed for video game development in the late 1990s and has since made a steady ascent in filmmaking projects like the 2023 Hollywood blockbuster “Barbie” and “The Mandalorian” series on Disney+.
“The highlight was utilizing our own environment on the LED volume — how breathtaking it looked, even without being optimized,” Lontz said about the experience at Vū.
The trip exemplified the Digital Worlds Institute’s mission to give students real-world experiences in digital arts and sciences professions.
Becoming a BADAS at the Digital Worlds Institute
The UF Digital Worlds Institute was founded in 2001 as a research venture between the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, the College of Journalism and Communications, and the College of the Arts. It is a hub that connects the fields of technology, communication, and design by seating digital arts and sciences at the fulcrum.
“Similar to how we’re seeing AI and blockchain come into higher education right now, in the early 2000s, there was a huge push for digital arts and media institutes,” said Justin Marlin, the Digital Worlds Institute’s associate director for student affairs and administration, who helps facilitate onsite industry experiences like the Vū trip. “In higher education, different disciplines would often be siloed into different colleges, departments, and units. The Digital Worlds Institute was developed to bridge those gaps.”
Marlin’s role touches every stage of the Digital Worlds student experience — from recruitment and admissions help to supporting student organizations, offering internship guidance and career counseling, and bringing the student experience lifecycle full circle via alumni engagement.
“While some students arrive at UF with a clear path, like majoring in biology on a pre-med track, our students are often still exploring their direction,” Marlin explained. “‘Do I want to pursue animation? Is game design the right fit for me? What are my natural talents and interests?’ That process of discovery is crucial. The Digital Worlds Institute unites programmers, artists, and storytellers under one roof, embodying our interdisciplinary mission. With digital arts and sciences — and arts disciplines in general — there’s a natural propensity toward learning while doing, while experiencing.”
From its inception, Digital Worlds’ founding director James Oliverio focused on developing the institute as an environment that would welcome experimentation and catalyze interdisciplinary collaboration. Oliverio directed the institute from 2001 to 2023 before returning full-time to the classroom, where he is now a professor of digital arts and sciences. Tim Difato currently serves as the institute’s acting director.
Under Oliverio’s leadership, the institute was established “as a place where boundaries between arts, technology, and communication blur to create new possibilities,” Difato said. “Today, our faculty and staff continue this mission by combining interdisciplinary education with theory, research, and practice through creative inquiry, hands-on experiential learning, industry engagement, and specialized research opportunities. This holistic approach enables our students to push the boundaries of digital innovation while developing the practical skills and experience necessary to excel in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.”
The institute offers two degree options: a Bachelor of Arts in Digital Arts and Sciences (BADAS) degree and a Master's in Digital Arts and Sciences (MiDAS) degree. There is also a digital arts and sciences (DAS) minor.
After completing core requirements, including a portfolio submission at the end of the second year, BADAS students choose electives that orbit three focus areas: animation, experience design and production, and game design. This allows students to customize their skill sets for careers in entertainment and interactive media, immersive technology and simulation, or design and visualization.
“You could divide the digital arts and sciences bachelor of arts into 50 majors,” Marlin said. “But we felt that, if we divided them into tracks and then into different degree programs, we would begin making silos within our own unit, and that's not something we want to do. Our goal is to preserve the freedom for students to explore and experience what I call ‘creative collisions’ — the merging of diverse skills, ideas, and perspectives — all while fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration.”
Lontz came to UF as an out-of-state transfer student, and his search for a video production program in Florida led him to the Digital Worlds Institute.
“I knew I was looking for a school that would give me the opportunity to develop a video editing career — and there are lots of film colleges and colleges with visual effects programs out there,” Lontz said. “What brought me to Digital Worlds was that I have an interest in animation and games as well. I was really surprised that the University of Florida had a degree that was so well-tailored to my interests. Not only does the digital arts and sciences [bachelor of arts] have video production, but it also has areas covering the fundamentals of animation, game design, and coding.”
Lontz’s post-graduation plans are to continue building his expertise — and his résumé — in video production. He envisions blending the secondary areas of interest he pursued in his Digital Worlds electives, and in clubs like the Virtual Production Club, into his career plans.
“If I can work in aspects that merge both — like animator showcases for journalism or developing videos for esports — I would love to work in those types of environments,” Lontz said.
‘Creative collisions’ in the classroom
Anderson Allen is a fourth-year computer science student at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering who came to UF to prepare for a career in video game design. He is pursuing a DAS minor at the Digital Worlds Institute, and is a founding member and past president of Gator Esports.
“My game development classes in Digital Worlds present open-ended problems and opportunities to create and discuss. If you want to do an animation project that's entirely focused on lighting, then you need to focus on the lighting lectures and figure out how to utilize what you’ve learned in the best way possible,” Allen said. “But your friend in the same class may be working on something different, where she's entirely focused on background art and how she wants to utilize it to tell a story.”
Digital Worlds also hosts “game jams,” where UF students team up to create a video game from scratch in 48 hours.
“Students sometimes form groups made up entirely of artists or exclusively computer science majors,” Marlin said. “Games created by the artists might look visually stunning but may lack some playability. On the other hand, games developed by computer science majors might feature solid mechanics but fall short in visual appeal.”
The more interdisciplinary the team, Marlin said, the better the result.
The ‘home room of student involvement’and peer mentorship
“UF students are known not just for their book smarts but for being action-oriented; it's a core part of who they are,” Marlin said. “Getting into UF shows you're bright but you're also someone who's led clubs, participated in intramural sports, and been involved in so many activities.”
UF’s culture of student involvement has had a considerable impact on Digital Worlds development since the institute’s inception. The institute launched its first master’s degree program in 2005 before building out the BADAS undergrad program.
In the institute’s earliest years, “the grad students who were spending time here wouldn’t necessarily be digital arts and sciences students,” Marlin said. “They would come from computer science or art — from all over UF — because they were working on a project or they had a cool idea. Here, they were able to use their craft and see it come to life in collaborative projects with the people they were meeting.”
When the bachelor’s degree program launched in 2014, Oliverio and Digital Worlds faculty members — noting the impact of bringing students together outside the classroom — helped the institute’s first undergrads start a social club called the BADAS Society.
The BADAS Society “quickly became the ‘homeroom of student involvement,’” Marlin said, where students could organize social events like potlucks and pool parties, and support UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital by participating in the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals’ ExtraLife video gaming fundraiser.
As the institute grew, Marlin said, various interest groups began to form clubs. As of 2024, Digital Worlds Institute is home to seven student clubs, including the BADAS Society and the BADAS Mentorship Program, and interest groups like the Virtual Production Club, Gator VR, Gator User Design, Gator ESports, and the Gator Animation Club.
Kelly Beaudrot, a fourth-year BADAS student with a focus in animation, said the BADAS Mentorship Program was the first student organization she joined during her first year at UF. Grace Riley (BADAS ’23), a Digital Worlds alum, worked with Marlin while she was a student to launch the club in 2021.
“Grace recognized a need for people to get help preparing for their portfolio submissions at the end of sophomore year. She worked with Digital Worlds to make that happen by connecting lowerclassmen with upperclassmen who have been through the process,” Beaudrot said. “I joined, and I loved it, so I reached out to her because I wanted to help out more. At that point, Grace was doing everything on her own, so she created a shadow program where a bunch of us who had been mentees started helping out.”
Beaudrot succeeded Riley as the BADAS Mentorship Program president in 2023. She said the club’s cabinet now has a vice president, Jane Apostol, and a leadership team with shared administrative duties.
“Last summer, we did a lot of work on nailing down our core values and mission statement around ‘empowering communication, guidance, and growth.’ BADAS Mentors is very much about trying to pair people up,” Beaudrot said. “If you’re a mentee who wants to go into game design, it’s about finding a mentor who is further along in their game design journey, who knows more about the portfolio-building process and the classes you’ll most likely be taking and might know more about the career field. We try to foster an environment where they can meet up for opportunities that will benefit both the mentee and the mentor.”
Beaudrot said the BADAS Mentors are currently working to set up a “headshot workshop” where students can have professional photos taken for their LinkedIn profiles — a powerful asset for today’s job seekers, but a step students can sometimes overlook, or struggle to find the time to complete, amid the flurry of exams and final project deadlines. By arranging walk-in headshot sessions, the BADAS Mentors aim to help their peers put their best faces forward as they enter the workforce.
Extracurriculars reinforce skills learned in the classroom
“We’re really focused on blending the academic with the experiential,” Marlin said. “It's not just about teaching hard skills in the classroom; it’s about weaving in those soft skills that students develop outside of it. Through student activities, clubs, and involvement opportunities, we create a transformative journey where, from day one to graduation, they’re not just gaining technical expertise but also growing personally. It’s about preparing them to excel in their careers and navigate life’s challenges with confidence.”
Allen said his involvement in clubs like the BADAS Society and Gator Esports has yielded valuable self-knowledge about his aptitudes beyond computer science.
Being president of the Gator Esports club “led me to realize, ‘Hey, I'm actually pretty good at this people thing.’ I didn't think about myself that way before I got to Digital Worlds,” Allen said. “Before going into college, I mostly thought I was going to sit in my room and program things. Being able to be like, ‘Hey, let’s start something together,’ and seeing that through has been one of the most impactful things that I’ve experienced since I got to UF.”
Allen also said that working alongside Digital Worlds staff on live events like Dance Marathon at UF has helped him develop professional competencies in areas outside of his degree focus.
“I've found that people in Digital Worlds are willing to answer your questions and willing to help in ways that I haven't seen in almost any other department on campus. Ethan [Tripp] and Jared [Crane] are the operations people at Digital Worlds; they’re not professors but both have been extremely helpful as mentors,” Allen said. “They’ve given me advice on how to run events by utilizing their own professional experiences in event production and AV for live events. That’s something I got an opportunity to see when I helped run sound and AV for Dance Marathon at the O'Connell Center. Being able to work with that level of technology, and that level of production, is very interesting to me. It does seem like another pathway.”
There is one unexpected perk of learning the ins and outs of audiovisual production from behind the scenes in the O'Dome, Allen said.
“Have you ever done computer science homework on a jumbotron?” he said. “It definitely makes homework more fun.”
Digital Worlds alums stay connected, support next-gen grads
The BADAS degree program that started with roughly 40 undergrads in 2014 has grown to more than 300 students in 2024. One of the primary goals of the Digital Worlds Institute, now in its second decade of launching Gator grads into the workforce, is to facilitate and strengthen students’ industry access points.
A generation of BADAS and MiDAS grads are currently navigating the booming digital arts and sciences job sector. Marlin noted that students who are deeply engaged with their professors, mentors, peers, and the extracurricular offerings at Digital Worlds not only find career success, but they also return to the institute as engaged alumni who are eager to connect and share their experience with current students.
"Over the years, we've had students land roles at major game franchises and earn credits in films like the ‘Spider-Verse’ saga,” Marlin said. “Being a close-knit community where we know everyone by name makes it easier to personally connect with our expanding DAS network and alumni, inviting them to return as guest speakers or mentors for our current students.”
Jesse Rapczak, who came to UF in 1999 and was a member of the institute’s first graduating class in 2003, exemplifies the “full circle” potential of the Digital Worlds student lifecycle — from student, to career success story, to returning to the institute to share insights with a new generation of DAS students who are preparing to embark on their own career paths.
Rapczak’s professional roster includes everything from handling visual effects production on films like “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” and “Catwoman,” to serving as a technical art director for the Microsoft HoloLens, to developing the 2016 PC gaming blockbuster “ARK: Survival Evolved” with fellow UF alum Jeremy Stieglitz.
Each spring, Digital Worlds Convergence brings students, alumni, community partners, and industry professionals together at UF’s Reitz Union. Rapczak attended Convergence in 2023 and received the institute’s first-ever Career Achievement Award.
The Convergence Student Showcase is the centerpiece of the annual gathering, serving as a “reverse career fair” where students can practice pitching ideas and sharing their work in a professional setting. More broadly, it is a hub where alumni and industry leaders can connect with upcoming and recent graduates who are negotiating the space between “student” and “professional.”
“If there’s any advice I can give you guys,” Rapczak told the institute’s graduating seniors during his 2023 Convergence visit, “it’s to keep those connections you’ve made in this program and don’t be afraid to take leaps with your work. Just because you’re making animations today doesn’t mean you can’t jump in and do something completely different tomorrow with AI. Every new piece of technology is a tool, and I can’t wait to see what you all create in your careers.”
Marlin added that Digital Worlds students sometimes change their majors, and graduates may change their career paths. Exploration, overall, is encouraged.
“I've seen so many students — computer science, biology, marketing — come here with a hobby, like video games or animation, never thinking they could turn it into a career. They join clubs, take the DAS minor, and suddenly realize they love the classes and professors,” Marlin said. “Soon, they’re in our advising office. They may not change their major, but they finish their degree, showcase their work at Convergence, and graduate. Later, as alumni, they return to Convergence as industry representatives, giving back to current students. It’s a positive cycle that keeps growing with each new class.”
Digital Worlds Convergence, field trips like the Vū visit, and the burgeoning influx of student organizations that coalesce around industry-specific interests, all serve a similar goal: delivering hands-on, interdisciplinary experiences and career connections that provide students with a sturdy foundation as they enter the workforce.
“At Digital Worlds, we’re focused on helping students develop not just industry skills but the ability to think critically, explore creatively, and collaborate across different fields. It’s about more than mastering new tech; it’s about discovering new ways to solve problems and push boundaries,” Difato said. “By combining applied and theoretical learning with a broad, interdisciplinary approach, as well as meaningful industry collaborations, we give our students the tools to make an impact. And as a result, when Digital Worlds students graduate, they’re not just ready for a job; they’re ready to tackle the complex challenges of the 21st century’s digital age, become catalysts of innovation, and make a lasting impact in their careers and communities.”
In Summer 2024, Digital Worlds Institute — in collaboration with partners from across the university — was awarded a UF Student Technology Fee Grant to bring virtual production capabilities to students in the form of an LED volume provided by Vū Technologies. This new technology will be housed in the Norman Gym at the Digital Worlds Institute’s Research, Education, and Visualization Environment.
“This cutting-edge innovation will support a wide range of interdisciplinary applications, enhancing the learning experience across multiple fields,” Difato said. “We are thrilled to provide our students with access to these state-of-the-art tools and technologies, preparing them for the future of creative and technical industries."
News Post : Nov 13, 2024
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