Students at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center are working hard to dispel the notion that graduate school - at least in their field of study - is all fun and games.

Granted, they go on class trips to Kennywood Park in West Mifflin and Dave & Buster's in Homestead, and on extended excursions to places like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Some get internships at Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development Inc. in Glendale, Calif., where innovations for the Disney theme parks are created, and George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic in San Rafael, Calif., a digital production company that creates visual effects for motion pictures.

But these students aren't just playing around with their education. They aspire to be the next generation of creative geniuses like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. They have a passion for what they do, a capacity for critical thinking and a pulse on the future.

Leading them in that direction are the co-directors of ETC, Donald Marinelli, a drama and arts management professor, and Randy Pausch, a computer science professor, who have melded two totally different disciplines into the new CMU master's degree program which they believe is unequaled at any other university.

"Our charge is nothing less than creating visionaries," Marinelli points out. "It's about the future - and the doors to creativity and imagination that technology is opening."

The fact that they share the co-director title - and an office on the Oakland campus - is an indication of their shared respect for each other and their commitment to linking the arts and technology, they say. "It sends a real signal to the students about getting technologists and artists to work together," Pausch says.

"To earn a two-year Masters of Entertainment Technology degree, jointly conferred by CMU's College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science, students learn computer animation and computer-generated effects. They also study improvisational acting, game design, Building Virtual Worlds and elective topics ranging from artificial intelligence and general robotics to electronic and computer music and film editing."

"I like to say we've turned computer science into a performing art," Marinelli says.

Besides the traditional courses, ETC students spend a lot of their time taking project courses, defined by the curriculum as "group independent studies" in which teams of three to six students work together on a focused project during a semester. Teammates come from varying backgrounds and disciplines and get hands-on working experience together.

Pausch says the creative projects and the hands-on experiences are what sets CMU's program apart from similar offerings at other universities. They also help to prepare students for entering the job force after graduation.

"Some 25 percent of our incoming students want to design games (for a living)," Pausch says. "We show them that the field is about collaboration. When students graduate and look for jobs, the recurring theme is they have no experience working in interdisciplinary groups. We can do that better than industry. We can take time to mentor the students, and they can get feedback from their peers."

Slackers don't last long in the program, he notes. When students immerse themselves in their group work, they realize they're in for the long haul. "It's 'roll up your sleeves, you're gonna be here late,'" says Pausch.

This semester, students are delving into a variety of interesting and diverse topics at labs located at CMU's facility in the Pittsburgh Technology Center on Second Avenue in Oakland, formerly the site of the Jones & Laughlin steel mill. ETC extended its physical space from the CMU campus to accommodate the growth of the new degree program, Marinelli says.

At the technology center, projects have their own space and separate areas for students to work on them together. One of their current projects is a networked, multiplayer collaborative game known as "Biohazard." Jesse Schell, a former creative director of the Walt Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio in California and newest faculty member on the ETC staff, is leader of the "Biohazard" development team.

Schell previously worked as lead designer for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer's Gold," a virtual reality attraction at DisneyQuest interactive theme park in Orlando, Fla. "Pirates" won a Thea award from the Themed Entertainment Association. He also helped to develop "Toontown Online," a multiplayer Internet game.

As part of his new role at Carnegie Mellon, Schell utilizes his expertise as a designer, programmer and manager on several other projects for Disney theme parks, to oversee the "Biohazard" game. It focuses on players who assume roles of firemen responding to a chemical attack and who must make decisions to guide civilians out of a mall to safety. To succeed, players must allocate resources efficiently with each other.

Schell says "Biohazard" is an example of how technology can be helpful in training first responders. It also shows how entertainment can be used to educate, he adds. The project is a collaborative effort among the ETC and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft, the Region 13 Weapons of Mass Destruction Task Force of the Allegheny County Department of Emergency Services and the Federation of American Scientists. It has already been tested by Pittsburgh area firefighters, he says, who have "given us great feedback."

Another project is DJ Sez, an interactive experience designed for use on the Jam-O-Drum, a collaborative audiovisual instrument for four players to make music as a group. It has the potential for installations in social venues like arcades, children's museums, dance clubs and malls, according to Tina "Bean" Blaine, academic adviser.

"This device integrates electronic drum pads with computer graphics visuals in an interactive installation for novice musicians. It's like a giant electronic drum circle. It also encourages collaboration and communication. People come together and have to interact with each other," Blaine says.

Blaine is a visiting faculty member at ETC, where she is exploring new interface designs for collaborative musical games and interactive media. As a musical interactivitist at Interval Research in Palo Alto, Calif., she led a development team in the creation of Jam-O-Drum. A composer and multi-instrumentalist, Blaine has written music for National Public Radio, video games, TV and documentary soundtracks, and currently performs with RhythMix Ensemble, Pandemonaeon and Bogo. She has also recorded with Brian Eno, Mickey Hart, Haunted by Waters, D'CuCKOO, Tracy Blackman and others.

Her presence at the ETC - along with that of adjunct professor Kerry Handron, lecturer Brenda Bakker Harger and associate professor Jessica Hodgins - is an inspiration for young women hoping to enter the computer field, according to Marinelli.

"There's a strong initiative at CMU to get girls involved in computer science," Blaine says. "In the entertainment field, it's a brand-new burgeoning field. We have a chance to make a difference. We're helping to define the future."

Harger, whose background is in theater, is a lecturer in improvisation with the ETC. She is also faculty adviser for Project AWESOME, which stands for Automated Web-based Entry System Or Meshed Environments. Students working on this project are exploring communication through the use of "ibutton" technology.

She and a group of students were recently invited to present their Interactive Theatre Initiative in New York City at "First Light," an annual festival of new plays by New York's Ensemble Studio Theatre exploring the worlds of science and technology. Harger's group is working on developing interactive technologies known as "A Techno Theatre Experiment," that entertain theater audiences with special effects projected on the screen as they are seated in an auditorium waiting for a movie or production to begin.

Another project on which ETC students are working is Project Aviary, an immersive dome classroom to be constructed at the National Aviary on Pittsburgh's North Side. The classroom will offer interactive technology and a unique multisensorial experience for students studying birds and their environments, Marinelli says.

ETC students have come from various disciplines to participate in the new master's degree program at CMU. About half of those admitted have technology backgrounds in computer science or electrical and mechanical engineering, according to Pausch. Others have undergraduate fine arts degrees in art, design and music.

"The key thing they have in common is they're very good at something," Pausch says, "and they want to work with people of different backgrounds."

Amy Kalson, who earned a liberal arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., says she left a successful career as an Internet programmer in Denver to come to the ETC. She has worked as a game design intern for Maxis, Electronic Arts, and says she hopes to design video games as a career.

"I feel it is important for women to make games in order to increase the number of females who play games," she says. "I believe this is crucial to closing the digital gender divide. My ultimate dream is to start my own game studio with a couple of my fellow ETCers."

Serena Lam of Hong Kong earned a degree in business administration at CMU and was looking for a job in her field when she discovered ETC. "It was almost like a point of no return," the graduate student says. "Who wants to go back to spreadsheets after experiencing this?"

Chris Spiller of McLean, Va., came to CMU after attending the University of Virginia, where he says he majored in cognitive science "but spent the majority of my time in the drama department." He says he was interested in special effects and lighting techniques and learned about ETC from his psychology professor.

"Now I'm looking into experience design or theming an environment, whether it's a restaurant or a retail establishment," Spiller says. "I'm also interested in computer-generated special effects." He says he is excited about his career potential as the result of his ETC experiences. But he says that some students outside the department still don't understand the work involved in the new program.

"There's a common misconception on campus that all we do is sit around playing computer games," he says. The reality is that "if you see someone playing a computer game, chances are he designed it."

Pausch says that programs such as ETC still face critics who can't conceive of the inevitable connection between technology and learning. "There's still the notion that if you're being entertained, you're not being educated," he says.

Marinelli agrees that the astounding advances in technology have changed the way in which students learn, and he says "it's very sad that (traditional) education continues to fight (the changes) rather than embrace (them)."

To illustrate the fast pace of advancements in their field, Pausch tells his students that, according to statistics, they're going to have seven careers in their lifetime, "and you don't even know the names of four of them. We don't have a clue where technology is heading. It's like looking at one of today's films in the year of Charlie Chaplin."

Or - to make a comparison that college students can identify with - it's like living in an age of virtual reality games and only playing Pong.

Options in Entertainment Technology

Although it's a popular career goal at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, video game design is by far not the only option for students who enter the new graduate program.

The advent of computer-mediated digital technologies has opened up a whole new area of entertainment experiences and venues for students to explore, according to ETC co-director Donald Marinelli.

One of the center's goals is to have technologists and fine artists work together on projects intended to entertain, inform, inspire, or otherwise affect an audience, guest, players or participant, he says. As a result, "entertainment technology" also includes:

• specialty venues such theme parks, themed retail, specialty restaurants, and other location-based entertainment venues
• motion-base rides
• console and PC interactive game design
• the creation of unique input devices
• virtual reality displays
• massive immersive display environments such as planetaria and Omnimax
• interactive robot animatronics
• synthetic interview technology
• speech recognition
• augmented reality
• digital production and postproduction
• sound synthesis, surround sound, 3-D sound, and streaming audio
• entertainment robotics

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