Growing up, Augusta University junior Grace Rolfe admits she was your typical “theater kid.”

“In the beginning, I was really into sound engineering and music, so I got a gig in my high school doing the sound engineering,” Rolfe said. “Eventually, I started doing the lights and began to move pretty heavily into theater. I was definitely a theater kid, so I began helping my friend, who was also in the theater, do a short film in high school, and it just made me really interested in filmmaking.”

But when Rolfe first enrolled at Augusta University a few years ago, she wasn’t sure exactly where she was headed or what she wanted to study.

“I didn’t go into college instantly thinking I would do film,” she said. “I thought, ‘Let me take some classes and kind of figure it out.’ But I took one film class my first semester, and afterward, I was like, ‘This is it. This is what I’m going to do.’”

While Rolfe’s major is currently integrated studies, she can’t wait to officially declare her new major as the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital and Visual Storytelling that will begin this fall at Augusta University.

“I began with an integrated studies degree because I wanted to just kind of hone in on the classes that I thought would best serve me and help me become a filmmaker,” Rolfe said. “Fortunately, taking that approach has given me a really good lead into the new BFA because I’ve been taking a lot of art and design classes as opposed to some of the other required classes. So, thankfully, all of the classes that I’ve taken so far are going to fit pretty much perfectly into this new BFA.”

“It couldn’t have worked out better,” she added. “I’m so grateful that Augusta University is offering me pretty much my perfect degree just before I graduate.”

Introducing the new BFA

The new BFA in Digital and Visual Storytelling starting this fall will prepare students to be “cutting-edge visual storytellers” by developing diverse skill sets including a strong theoretical and technical understanding of filmmaking, theater performance, writing, directing and production through multiple forms of expressive media, explained Scott Thorp, chair of the Department of Art and Design at Augusta University.

“Students graduating with this degree will have the skills to be like a one-stop shop of multimedia production,” Thorp said. “This is an extremely unique degree. In fact, we haven’t found a similar degree anywhere in the country, because, traditionally, theater and film are housed in different places. Other programs don’t even attempt to put them together, which is a shame because they interact in much the same way.”

The new BFA program will be headed by a group of talented and enthusiastic professors from the Department of Art and Design, including Matthew Buzzell, Dr. Melanie Kitchens O’Meara and Doug Joiner, Thorp said.

“In the beginning, the more we began designing this degree, the more excited we got,” Thorp said. “A student with this degree is going to be able to film something that they acted in, they directed, they edited, they wrote, so I think this new BFA will be a place for students with all of these varieties of backgrounds. A student can come here and be a creative person with a lot of freedom and future opportunities because there’s a great deal of flexibility with this degree.”