The program offers areas of study for students interested in careers involving digital tools for visual media. It provides training in digital tools applicable to the arts, sciences, and humanities, and to the development of education, science, research and commercial products.

It has elements of both science programs and arts programs. By exposing students to disciplines from various ancient and modern world cultures, as well as classical, folk and contemporary art, the program takes care in establishing a solid foundation for developing and applying their New Media skills.

Programming is, in the current state of technology, the only sure way to give controlled dynamic behaviors to characters and other elements in virtual world-models.  Students will pick an subject area, either in the natural or social sciences, as a programming assignment to better understand the practical applications of scripting. In time, students will be able to design behaviors for virtual actors and 3D environments.

This program is organized to meet its objectives by helping students build skills in the following areas:

1)       Traditional arts for creative and pre-production formats such as literature, sculpture, drawing and painting, drama/acting and fundamentals in music.

2)       New media production formats such as 3D modeling and animation, image processing, foley (sound effects) and music creation

3)       New media post-production through editing for linear and non-linear Media output formats, such as video, CD-ROM and DVD, the Internet, and virtual realities.

4)       Programming, grounded in:

A) creating autonomous agents describing actions and interactions in the arts, sciences, and humanities;
B) creating tools that participants can use from within virtual worlds;
C) robotics,
D) dynamics of the physical world; and
E) dynamics of the social world including random event simulations.

5)       Application areas in the natural and social sciences. (such as physics, biology, oceanography, geology and volcanism, sustainable technologies, psychology, sociology, Hawaiian language, and other relevant areas).

6)       Internship and entrepreneurship.

Semester-to-semester, the program provides classes in New Media pre-production, production and post-production disciplines, programming, traditional art forms and cultural literacy. Classes are then offered which are project driven, where a New Media presentation of a social or natural science topic is produced. Students will work together with instructors in these subjects to develop enactive models and presentations that can be used in future instruction.

The MATP also provides classes that allow students to specialize in one area where they have shown exceptional talent. The program includes classes in media output. The internship brings students into the workplace outside of school and gives them a chance to integrate their skills with projects there. Classes in entrepreneurship will focus on the process of marketing skills and/or product.