About

The specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant.

Technology and Digital Studies represents a collection of programs sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters in collaboration with departments, colleges, and centers across the University. These programs shape the future by ensuring students can see the larger whole and broader horizon while also acquiring relevant technological skills and understandings. Students combine their proficiencies from the liberal arts — including excellent written and verbal communication, analytical thinking, and contextual understanding — with skills and perspectives from new disciplines including computing technologies, data science, design thinking, software development, security studies, and digital arts.  

Whether they choose the B.A. in computer science, the data science minor, or the Idzik Computing and Digital Technologies minor, our students appreciate the unique profile of skills they obtain and are energized by the mix of hands-on, real-world activities and coursework. They value the fact that they can combine their desire for a liberal arts education with their technology-related passions.

The programs have a common home in the Technology and Digital Studies Hub in O’Shaugnessy 217, adjacent to the Notre Dame Tech Ethics Center, and the planned location for the Reilly Center for the Study of Science, Technology, and Values.

Partial funding for these programs comes from the generous endowment of Paul and Ruth Idzik.

We need to be adding not social sciences of the past, but something related to humanity and how to think about the effects of technology on humanity — which is partly sociology, partly anthropology, partly psychology, partly philosophy, partly ethics … it’s some new formulation of all of those things, as part of a STEM education