The biomedical photographic communications program is a unique communications media program, one of seven taught in the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences, that blends applied imaging approaches using various media and technologies and studies in the life sciences. While obtaining a strong foundation in the sciences, students design and produce instructional media projects using a variety of media technologies that address the communications needs that would be found in medicine, science, and industry, including new digital imaging systems and web publishing.
Importantly, this program is the only one of its type in the United States. It prepares students for photographic and imaging careers that are found in various science-related institutions, including ophthalmology and forensic laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, health care and medical research centers, as well as military bases and medical imaging companies. Additionally, because of curriculum’s flexibility, recent graduates have been successful finding positions in the electronic imaging field as technical service representatives for instructional media production and visual information specialists in multimedia and web publishing or manufacturers of medical instruments such as microscopes.
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The curriculum includes topics such as biomedical photography, close-up and high magnification photography, artificial lighting for small objects, image ethics, and ophthalmic diagnostic imaging, desktop and web publishing, computer graphics, biology, mathematics, and the fundamentals of video. Students will also be introduced to a wide variety of career options through the program's interactive lecture series with professional biomedical and new media experts, which will assist them in identifying and securing a summer co-op internship to gain real world experience in the biomedical photographic communications field.
During the junior and senior years, the curriculum becomes very flexible, allowing students to choose elective courses and build a photographic concentration from a wide variety of courses taught in the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, the College of Science. These courses can either be done within the Biomedical Department or within another department of the students choice, such as the Ophthalmic Concentration where students interested in the study of the eye take a three-quarter class learning how to photograph the eye as well as understand its’ inner workings. Other students have gone on to pursue Advertising Photography concentrations, Print Media concentrations, Science concentrations and many others. This flexibility coupled with the personal attention of faculty advising allows students to focus on their career and educational goals. It is not uncommon for graduates to continue their studies in graduate school programs in imaging, medicine, or information technology.
Since 1968 various companies that produce visual communications materials have actively recruited most of the nearly 500 graduates of the BPC program. Many of these graduates have become directors and leaders in their respective institutions and companies. Today the biomedical photographic communications program boasts a placement rate of well over 85 percent.
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