Establishing academic programs in integrated media systems

For four years, we have been developing a wide range of graduate and undergraduate degree programs related to integrated media systems on behalf of the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), for the School of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). The IMSC is a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center (ERC) that became operational in 1996. It is not an academic department; however, one of its important missions is education. Most of the developed degree programs have been for engineering students, but one is available to all students. These degree programs are administered either by an academic department (e.g., computer science) or by an assistant dean of the School of Engineering. The purpose of this article is to not only describe these degree programs, but to also provide some lessons that have been learned along the way, lessons that may help expedite the development of similar programs at other universities.