Academics
Undergraduate Opportunities

Academics: Undergraduate Opportunities

We are pleased to support our undergraduate students in their UC Berkeley experience! Here are the opportunities the BCNM provides!

Interested in our undergraduate certificate? Find out more about the program here!

Scholarships and Awards

Undergraduate Research Support:

Each year, our undergraduates have the opportunity to apply for the undergraduate research fellowship. Selected students will have the opportunity to work closely with a new media graduate student on dissertation-level research. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $1,000. More information here.

Eugene Jarvis Scholarship:

The Eugene Jarvis scholarship hopes to promote fearless innovation at UC Berkeley. Recognizing that education has become increasingly expensive and that students as a result are motivated to make educational decisions based on future job prospects, the Silicon Valley game designer and entrepreneur seeks to promote intellectual exploration through a scholarship that supports students with innovative design projects at the Center for New Media who show financial need. As an new media student, you are automatically considered for this scholarship. More information here.

Academic Coursework

New Media undergraduates receive priority in New Media courses, including the ever popular NWMEDIA C166: Critical Practices and NWMEDIA C203: Critical Making. Check out our current NWMEDIA listings here! We offer the following classes:

  • NWMEDIA R1B: New Media Reading and Composition. (4 units). How do media shape our perception of our environment? What is at stake when we adopt or create new media? This seminar provides continued training in expository and argumentative writing, with an emphasis on new media. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement.
  • NWMEDIA 90: Introduction to New Media (3-4 units)
  • NWMEDIA 150AC: New Media and American Cultures. (4 units). This course studies the influence of new media on various cultures in the U.S. and/or the influence of American cultures on new media. Topics vary by semester. Check current Schedule of Classes or Berkeley Center for New Media web site for current course offerings (bcnm.berkeley.edu).
  • NWMEDIA C166: Critical Practices: People, Places, Participation. (4 units). Critical Practices is a hands-on studio design course where students work at the intersection of technological innovation and socially engaged art. Students will integrate a suite of digital fabrication tools with social design methods to create work that engages in cultural critique. Working with innovative technologies and radical, new art practices, this course will explore: hybrid art forms, critical design for community engagement, interventions in public spaces
  • NWMEDIA 190: Special topics in New Media (3-4 units).

By permission from the instructor, you can (and we encourage you to) also enroll in our graduate classes:

  • NWMEDIA 200: History and Theory of New Media. (4 units). This course provides a broad historical and theoretical background for new media production and practice. The class will map out theoretical approaches from different disciplines and allow graduate students to discuss and apply them to their own research projects.
  • NWMEDIA 201: Questioning New Media. (3 units). Held in conjunction with the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium which brings internationally-known speakers to campus to present their work on advanced topics in new media: http://atc.berkeley.edu. Students will enhance skills in questioning new media: how to think critically about new media, how to use new media resources to research pioneering work in new media, how to form incisive questions about new media, and how to evaluate and create
  • NWMEDIA C203: Critical Making. (4 units). Critical Making will operationalize and critique the practice of “making” through both foundational literature and hands on studio culture. As hybrid practitioners, students will develop fluency in readily collaging and incorporating a variety of physical materials and protocols into their practice. Students will envision and create future computational experiences that critically explore social and culturally relevant technological themes.
  • NWMEDIA C262:Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces. (4 units). This course explores the theory and practice of Tangible User Interfaces, a new approach to Human Computer Interaction that focuses on the physical interaction with computational media. The topics covered in the course include theoretical framework, design examples, enabling technologies, and evaluation of Tangible User Interfaces. Students will design and develop experimental Tangible User Interfaces using physical computing prototyping tools
  • NWMEDIA C265: Interface Aesthetics. (3 units). This course will cover new interface metaphors beyond desktops (e.g., for mobile devices, computationally enhanced environments, tangible user interfaces) but will also cover visual design basics (e.g., color, layout, typography, iconography) so that we have systematic and critical understanding of aesthetically engaging interfaces. Students will get a hands-on learning experience on these topics through course projects, design critiques
  • NWMEDIA 290: Special Topics in New Media.

As a new media undergraduate, you also have the opportunity to propose Decals through BCNM and to undertake independent studies with BCNM faculty. Remember, for both of these programs, you will need to find a NWMEDIA faculty sponsor from among our core executive committee.

Community

We offer our Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium, and History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series each year, as well as additional symposia. Our undergraduate students receive reserved seats and are invited to attend speaker dinners. Students can also help in the organization and execution of these great events.

Questions?

Contact Lara Wolfe at lara [​at​] berkeley.edu