Academics
Here, academic boundaries are meant to be crossed. VCU's faculty from across our schools and colleges have collaborated to create interdisciplinary programs designed for curious, creative thinkers who want to shape their own path and tackle real-world challenges from multiple perspectives. Whether you're adding an interdisciplinary minor to your degree program, designing your own major through Interdisciplinary Studies, pursuing the innovative Master of Product Innovation, or building skills through undergraduate certificates in Venture Creation and Product Innovation, you'll find opportunities to connect ideas, disciplines, and industries. With flexible minors, majors, and graduate programs, we empower students to lead, innovate, and make an impact wherever their passions take them.
Customizable Learning Pathways
No two student journeys look the same. Our customizable pathways empower students to design an academic experience that reflects their interests, values, and career goals. Whether combining disciplines, earning stackable credentials, or engaging in hands-on learning, students chart their own course with guidance from dedicated faculty, staff, and advisors every step of the way.
Experiential Learning
Through micro-credentials and hands-on learning opportunities, students can build real-world skills that complement their academic journey. We collaborate with VCU Continuing and Professional Education to offer flexible, industry-aligned programs that help students stand out and stay ahead in a rapidly changing world.
Academic
Programming
Our interdisciplinary classes, majors, minors, and undergraduate certificates are designed to help you build a dynamic, customized education that crosses traditional boundaries. Whether you're diving into Product Innovation, Venture Creation, or creating your own unique pathway, our programs prepare you to think boldly and lead across industries.
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Students, community members, and corporate partners come together through the VCU da Vinci Center for Innovation, a nationally recognized hub for creativity, entrepreneurship, and product development. Whether launching ventures through Shift Retail Lab or collaborating across disciplines, innovators of all backgrounds turn big ideas into real-world impact.
Credit for Prior Learning
At the Academy for Interdisciplinary Innovation, we recognize that learning doesn’t only happen in a classroom. For returning and nontraditional students in the Interdisciplinary Studies (BIS) program, the Credit for Prior Learning process offers the opportunity to turn real-world experience into academic credit.
How it Works
Once you've declared the BIS major, you'll enroll in IDST 452, a portfolio development course that guides you in connecting your professional and lived experiences to college-level learning. With support from faculty, you’ll build a portfolio that showcases your skills and growth. If approved by a faculty panel, your portfolio can earn you up to six upper-level credits through IDST 455.
Academic Programs
The minor in Practical AI provides an overview of artificial intelligence and its applications across a variety of disciplines and fields. It is meant to be applicable -and accessible- to all majors at VCU. When combined with the appropriate major, the minor can be useful to students in understanding and applying AI ethically in their chosen field and careers.
*this program is offered as a collaboration through the VCU Consortium
The minor in mixed and immersive reality studies provides an overview of the technology and culture of mixed, immersive, virtual and augmented realities. It is meant to be applicable — and accessible — to all majors at VCU. When combined with the appropriate major, the minor can be useful to students planning careers in any area concerned with immersive, virtually mediated society, culture and experience — from coding and technological innovation to policy, art and storytelling. The minor will introduce students to the subject through relevant coursework in technological systems, design aesthetics, and humanities and social sciences.
*this program is offered as a collaboration through the VCU Consortium
Employing a cross-disciplinary perspective that embodies concepts from arts, design, business, engineering, and humanities and sciences, students receive a robust learning experience that leads to an understanding of the challenges associated with and means for managing product design, product development and new-product introduction endeavors.
The Certificate in Product Innovation program runs concurrently with a student’s major and is not a stand-alone program.
Open to all VCU undergraduate students, the Certificate in Venture Creation focuses on developing a multidisciplinary mindset for successful entrepreneurialism and venture creation. Students participating in the program will hone understandings of the challenges, skills and resources necessary for venture creation, and through an immersive culmination experience, integrate these understandings around conceiving, planning and implementing a real venture.
For returning students admitted to the Interdisciplinary Studies program, the Credit for Prior Learning process allows students with professional and lived experience that transcends traditional higher education to receive academic credit.
The Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies is an individualized and interdisciplinary degree for students who wish to create an individualized curriculum not available in traditional curricular pathways within existing VCU degree programs. Students in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program are able to design an individualized degree compatible with academic, career or personal goals. Selected pathways are available online.
The M.I.S. degree program provides an opportunity for the highly motivated student to pursue a unique course of study that combines graduate course work in a learner-centered approach to graduate education. The student is an active participant in proposing a curriculum that supports an individualized and scholastically rigorous academic goal in a clearly defined, multidisciplinary program. To expand the program’s range of options and interdisciplinary perspectives, the program allows for cooperative ventures with other approved colleges and universities.
The Master of Product Innovation (MPI) at VCU is where creative minds from all backgrounds come together to turn bold ideas into real-world impact. Whether your foundation is in design, engineering, business, healthcare, the arts, or social sciences, this cross-disciplinary program is built for innovators who think differently, collaborate fearlessly, and thrive on solving complex challenges.
The graduate certificate in health care innovation program is a collaboration between the VCU School of Nursing and the VCU da Vinci Center for Innovation that prepares graduates as leaders in developing digital and physical products and innovative solutions in the area of health care.