March 31, 2017

Our undergraduate and graduate Digital Media Gaming programs have once again been ranked in the top ten by The Princeton Review in their eighth annual ranking of the best schools for students to not only study but kick start their career in game design. The full lists, which name the Top 50 Undergraduate and Top 25 Graduate, are competitive standings that measure academic offerings, lab facilities, starting salaries for post graduates and ongoing career achievements.  Our Game Design & Production program offers students several diverse opportunities to further develop their skillsets and passions. The Drexel University Virtual Reality Club (DUVR), is where students experiment and apply the latest virtual and augmented reality technologies. In November, DUVR won 1^st prize in the category of Human Well-Being for their project, StudyVR: A Kinesthetic Learning Framework for HTC Live, at the  MIT Media Lab’s Reality Virtually Hackathon. Our Motion Simulation Lab (MSL), features a 2.5-ton Voyager platform that is a flexible entertainment and research device available for use to the entire Drexel Community, and often used by the Them Park Engineering & Design (TPED) student group. Last March, Westphal students won First Prize in the Best Game category for Mirrors of Grimaldi at University Games Showcase of the Game Developers Conference, now in it's 31st year, with Intel sponsoring the competition. 

In other news from our Digital Media department, Rob Lloyd, Digital Media Professor, will assume new responsibilities starting April 1st as the Program Director of our Game Design & Production program. Lloyd joined the Department of Digital Media in 2014. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he has been working as both the faculty advisor of Drexel's Theme Park Engineering & Design student group and was instrumental in establishing the Motion Simulation Lab and its 2.5-ton Voyager platform. We thank Jeremy Fernsler, the outgoing Program Director, for his dedication and success running the Game Design & Production program for the past two years. Fernsler will continue teaching as an in-demand professor in our popular Animation & Visual Effects program.