The Academy for Creative Media at the University of Hawaii–West Oʻahu (ACMWO) has created a plan to use creative media as a gateway to engage underrepresented students in STEM concepts—a significant step toward supporting the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) initiative.
The plan was developed by Sharla Hanaoka, ACMWO director, and Brad Ashburn, associate professor of chemistry with the mathematics, natural and health sciences division at UH West Oʻahu.
Next steps
UH West Oʻahu will offer a new Math 100 course, Generative Art and Science, dedicated to the merge of art and math that supports the BPC plan welcoming all students with basic programming proficiency in spring 2025.
“By merging art into STEM fields, we’re not only breaking down barriers that often prevent students from our communities from pursuing computer science, but we’re also fostering creativity and unconventional thinking, preparing a new generation of problem-solvers equipped with both technical know-how and artistic vision for a future where technology and creativity are increasingly intertwined,” Hanaoka said. “This could lead to a more diverse, inclusive and innovative creative technology industry overall.”
Making art with science
Students Dylan Blue and Aina Kodaira—both pursuing a degree in creative media with a concentration in video game design and development—worked with Ashburn as a mentor on a summer research project that Ashburn will talk about in his upcoming course.
Blue and Kodaira presented their project, “Exploring Emergence with Cellular Automata,” at the UH West Oʻahu Student Research Experience Summer Symposium on August 9 at the Campus Center multi-purpose room. The project challenged them to combine software engineering, science, and design to build a highly interactive web application that generates complex patterns.
“We created an algorithm that creates different patterns; that’s how we blended technology with art,” Blue said. “This is significant because we don’t really see that happening too much, right? There’s always a distinct line between the field of science and creative media. …Being in a place where we havenʻt been before is pretty exciting.”
Both students plan this fall semester to take Ashburn’s new Generative Art and Science class, in which students will level up their creativity through hands-on computer programming, design and engineering projects.
“Many approaches to integrating the arts in STEM involve making art about science, but our approach is to make art with science,” Ashburn said.
—By Zenaida Serrano Arvman
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