A Franklin College student plays League of Legends online. Soon students will be able chose video game development as a concentration.
Photo provided
The upcoming fall semester at Franklin College will be the first for a new academic concentration in Game Development.
It will be offered as part of the software engineering major and provide students with a direct avenue into the rapidly growing career field of video game development, according to an announcement from the college.
The decision to offer the concentration came both as an answer to student interest and as a way to offer graduates entry into a growing field. Game development is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface and writing, making it ideal for a liberal arts institution as well as students seeking a wide variety of transferable skills, according to the college.
Franklin College’s game development concentration was built in collaboration with Rize Education with significant input from Unity Technologies, the makers of the most used video game engine. The program focuses on portfolio-building coursework and project-based learning and is centered around real-world lessons learned from industry partners and studio heads. This new program reflects the institution’s goal of ensuring that students are learning the knowledge, skills and tools that are in highest market demand in Indiana and across the globe, according to the college.
“Developing this program shows the desire to meet student interest in a high-demand field while staying committed to the skills that are best delivered through a liberal arts education and ensuring our relevance in a contemporary marketplace,” Kristin Flora, dean of the college, said in a statement.
The concentration also directly connects to the college’s digital fluency program, Flora said.
The new concentration will be partially funded through the Charting the Future of Indiana’s Colleges and Universities grant the college received from Lilly Endowment Inc. in 2020 to support efforts to increase digital fluency for its students and faculty.
