{"id":2544,"date":"2019-09-30T09:21:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T14:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/?p=2544"},"modified":"2019-09-30T09:21:53","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T14:21:53","slug":"det-program-earns-membership-of-the-unity-academic-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/det-program-earns-membership-of-the-unity-academic-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"DET Program Earns Membership of the Unity Academic Alliance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

We are part of an ever-changing, high-tech arena. The world is evolving with technology advancements that seem to develop at a higher rate of speed than ever before. ACU’s Digital Entertainment Technology (DET) program is focused on preparing Christian professionals to enter this competitive industry with all the necessary skills and tools under their belt to be successful in this fast-paced environment. For this reason, the faculty has implemented various training programs for technology students to become familiar with Adobe Software, Premiere Pro, and Unity game engine. The result of these efforts has allowed the DET program to earn top ranking on <\/span>The Princeton Review\u2019s <\/span><\/i>list of top 50 undergraduate schools to study game design in 2019 for the fourth time. In order to keep the ranking and grow as a cutting-edge program, the SITC faculty and staff are always on the look-out for the best resources to provide to their students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the training programs that faculty have focused on in the last year is the cross-platform game engine, \"\"Unity. According to job market analytics platform, Burning Glass, \u201cTech professionals who have Unity skills earn over $20,000 more than their peers without Unity skills\u201d and a Unity Developer is ranked #7 on LinkedIn\u2019s list of Top 20 Emerging Jobs<\/a>. Knowing the value of these skills, the program implemented Unity certifications in DET courses and, as a result, 95% of students in the Game Engines course gained Unity certifications last year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2018, the<\/span> cross-platform game engine created the Unity Academic Alliance as an effort to offer higher-education institutions the opportunity to expand their technology programs. <\/span>Knowing that as a member of the Unity Academic Alliance ACU would be formally recognized as a leader in cutting-edge Unity education, the leaders of the School of Information Technology and Computing decided to jump right into the opportunity. Professor Brian Burton shared his thoughts on the membership by saying, \u201cWe felt like it was important to offer these outside certifications because it speaks of the quality of the program and we wanted to be the charter members of the alliance.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"This membership not only speaks to the quality of the program, but it provides every student with a vast range of opportunities and resources to equip them for the future. Among the many benefits that members receive, Unity has listed the following as the main reasons to gain membership: networking of academic and industry partners, educator professional development, student professional development, formal recognition, support and guidance. This means that students will be able to join Unity\u2019s Global Student Ambassador Program, be part of conferences, student competitions, and gain valuable training that is consistent with the needs of the industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

With over 15,000 jobs currently open on Indeed.com looking for professionals with Unity skills, this membership will be of great value to students, the department, and community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are part of an ever-changing, high-tech arena. The world is evolving with technology advancements that seem to develop at a higher rate of speed than ever before. ACU’s Digital Entertainment Technology (DET) program is focused on preparing Christian professionals to enter this competitive industry with all the necessary skills and tools under their belt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,2750,74698,814,2012,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-current-students","category-digital-entertainment-technology","category-faculty","category-professional-development","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2544"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2563,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions\/2563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}