Catching up with GIMM — as it trains the next generation of developers

Boise State University’s Gaming, Interactive Media, and Mobile Technology major, popularly known as GIMM, will be graduating its first cohort of about 26 students this spring, and five of them already have jobs.

In fact, one of director Anthony Ellertson‘s biggest challenges is keeping the students in the program from being hired out before they graduate. The transdisciplinary degree covers gaming, interactive media, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), the Internet of Things and mobile development.

“This is a degree that’s in very high demand,” Ellertson said.

One of the most conservative predictions is that of Goldman Sachs, which projected the market for the augmented and virtual reality environment at $80 billion by 2025, he said. Ellertson noted that others are much higher. “There are a lot of jobs out there for our graduates,” he said.

In the Bureau of Labor Statistics list of the top 10 positions in information technology, “we are in three of those categories,” he said.

About 240 students are in the program, now in its fourth year. Unlike some other departments, staff have offices in the GIMM lab, so students don’t have to track down professors during office hours. It helps develop the kind of collaborative environment that is valued in modern coding jobs, Ellertson said.

Another notable factor is that about a third of the students are female, the highest proportion in science, technology, engineering, and math fields on campus.

Right now, Ellertson expects about a third of the students to get jobs in Idaho, primarily in Boise, and two-thirds outside Idaho. “The preponderance of jobs are in other markets,” he said. “We’ll see that change over time as the Boise infrastructure of technology companies increases. I’d like to see that number flip, and I think we will by 2025.”

Starting salaries in Boise are around $50,000, while salaries out of state are around $60,000, he said.

During the program, students work on a project basis combining both programming and design skills, starting with 2-D animation in the first semester and moving into sensor networks, working with the cloud, and 3-D modeling and animation. The degree finishes with a senior capstone project where the student works with an industry partner.

One project is a VR simulation for nursing students that teaches them how to insert a catheter. Typically, nursing students use mannequins, which are more expensive and take up more space. In addition, using a program means that instructors can simulate different scenarios.

Moreover, students are welcome to practice the simulation as much as they wish. The first time the students ran through the simulation, it took them 20 to 30 minutes, but after some practice, they had it down to six or seven minutes. “Some can do it in two minutes,” Ellertson said. In fact, when the nurses suggested that the developer — who had never seen a mannequin — try it, he did it flawlessly in seven minutes, he said.

While VR and AR are typically associated with gaming these days, the catheter simulation is an example of what the technologies will be able to do in industries where people need to practice over and over under a number of different scenarios, Ellertson said.

The students are also working with a foundation that Ellertson said he couldn’t name on a project that uses art to treat eating disorders, which is scheduled to be completed this spring. “It’s a series of interactive experiences that help the viewer see some of the same struggles, and there may be a commonality with what they may be going through,” he said.

Ellertson is also excited about projects that involve the community, such as a forthcoming one on autism, followed by one on dementia. In addition to helping with treatment, the projects will help the lab get more involved with the community, he said.

Meanwhile, Ellertson is continuing to grow the program and graduate more students. “Next year, we’ll have 60,” he predicted.