The School of Digital Sciences celebrated its third birthday with a party for faculty and staff Oct. 30.

Robert Walker, director of the School of Digital Sciences, said the school hosts the party every year to bring students and faculty together.

“It’s an opportunity to get all our students together,” Walker said. “Our classes are so distributed in buildings all around the campus that you might not encounter some of the other students.”

Senior digital sciences major Tia Coble choose to attend Kent for digital sciences on her birthday.

“On my 18th birthday, my mentor from high school brought me up here to personally meet Walker because she was friends with him,” Coble said. “So that’s what I did on my 18th birthday – I picked my concentration. I was welcomed into the school and I embraced it fully.”

Coble, whose concentration is in digital systems interaction, said the birthday party is a good way to meet other digital science students.

“It’s helpful to meet other students and to see how they’re using the major differently and how they’re molding it for their needs and what their aspirations are in the major,” Coble said.

Freshman digital sciences major Kevin Shand said he attended the birthday party even though he didn’t know what to expect.

“I thought it was a clever idea considering the program is small, so you can actually do this sort of thing,” Shand said.

At the party, Walker told the students how the School of Digital Sciences started.

“We were proposed about four and a half years ago,” Walker said. “A task force of people from five different colleges got together and were charged with coming up with something new.”

Since the program’s inception, the number of students increased from around 40 to around 350.

Walker told the students that the school has 600 applications for the spring semester.

“We ended the first year with 40 people,” Walker said. “We’re going into our fourth year with 350 students and may well have 450 in the spring.”    

Digital Sciences’ faculty and students ended the birthday celebration with a chorus of the “Happy Birthday” song.

Contact Erica Batyko at [email protected].