VIDA (Visual Information Design Arts) is presented as an option of a cross-disciplinary Minor that is intended to provide a flexible learning environment for students to engage composite and new-media and contemporary trends through lateral disciplinary course experiences. It is a "network" through which faculty/students seamlessly engage cross-disciplinary media, collaborative design projects, and research. Through this minor, students develop the skills and sensibilities to think and communicate across media and disciplinary boundaries. This networked Minor provides the infrastructure that enables our traditional and technology enhanced curricula to experiment with and contribute research to a synthetic, evolving twenty-first century visual language system of image, text, sound, and motion.

The Department defines the VIDA Minor as a choice between two alternative 18 credit hour scenarios:

1. a package of (9) credits each in two additional studio concentrations, totaling 18 credit hours , or
2. a package of (6) credits each in two additional studio concentrations plus (6) credits in a newly developed course, Inter-media Studies. The summation of this second scenario totals 18 credits hours as well. (See four year schemes below).