Karen Hoffmann – Science Writer

When Alyssa Reuter had to choose a college, she wanted one that offered programs in computer science and the arts. “The one school that was strong in both was Carnegie Mellon,” she says.

But how could she combine her two passions? Getting undergraduate degrees from both SCS and the College of Fine Arts—a double major—would have meant an extremely heavy workload, because the majors don’t have many overlapping courses.

As it turns out, Reuter wasn’t the only student asking to combine the disciplines into one undergraduate degree, says Franco Sciannameo, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Bachelor of Humanities and Arts (BHA) and Bachelor of Science and Arts (BSA) programs—joint efforts between CFA, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Mellon College of Science.

Students were literally “knocking on my door,” Sciannameo says. From game design and computer animation to computer music and robotic art, technology and the arts are no longer separable, he says. More >