A distinctive feature of the Department of Imaging Arts and Sciences is its all-round curriculum, offering students comprehensive exposure to a wide variety of forms of artistic expression via imaging, and the chance to specialize in their study.
The curriculum is structured around six specialist domains: photography, motion picture, animation, image computing, media art, and Image-Based Space.
In the first year, students take a fresh look at the meaning of visual images, while mastering basic skills in each domain.
In the second and third year, students choose classes from a range of specialist subjects in each domain, enabling them to broaden and deepen their knowledge.
The fourth year sees students select seminars according to their individual specialist subject, and expand upon themes and methodologies to produce graduation projects that represent the culmination of their studies. To ensure these studies deliver all-round, multifaceted, comprehensive learning, the dissertation and artistic work comprising the projects undergo critique by all faculty members, thereby breaking down the boundaries between genres. In addition, the department offers specialist subjects open to students from all years, as well as international collaborative projects and joint programs involving the worlds of industry, government, and academia.

The curriculum is designed to deepen students’ knowledge as it broadens it, and to broaden their knowledge as it deepens it.

Students begin by examining the meaning of visual images, and considering their essential nature and potential. While encountering image production processes involved in such areas as photography, motion picture, animation, image computing, media art, and image effect, students master wide-ranging knowledge and expressive techniques, as well as learning the basics of art and design, including painting and sculpture.

Choosing from a diverse array of practical classes in the six specialist domains—photography, motion picture, animation, image computing, media art, and spatial imaging—students make their own decisions about which classes to select, and broaden their knowledge and experience while increasing both their technical production skills and their expressive abilities. Students are free to choose whether to pursue cross-cutting or in-depth studies in the specialist domains as they develop stronger creative thinking skills.

Leveraging the comprehensive skills they have mastered so far, students apply and develop them in a specialist field of their choosing and undertake research work that takes their learning to a more advanced stage.
Enrolling in seminars taught by full-time faculty members, students embark on the dissertation and artistic work that forms their graduation project, which mobilizes the fruits of their four years of study. Under the guidance of faculty members in seminars, students handle the practical aspects of everything from planning to producing and screening/exhibiting their work, which is shown to the public after undergoing cross-genre critique by all faculty members.