The recent opening of Paris Hilton’s new nightclub in downtown Orlando created a brief media buzz, but another recent addition to downtown will likely have a much greater impact in the continued revitalization efforts of the area.  UCF’s Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA) has opened its first phase and soon will bring high-tech opportunities to downtown.

In April of 2004, the Florida Legislature provided $4.2 to UCF to create the FIEA. The City of Orlando and the Community Redevelopment Agency provided the downtown Expo Centre facility, as well as the funds to refurbish the building, to serve as the new home for the UCF School of Film and Digital Media (SFDM) and for FIEA.

The idea is to formulate a “creative village” in downtown Orlando – a community of small, medium and large media-related businesses, students, entrepreneurs, shops, restaurants, living spaces, learning places and entertainment venues. The vision is that the FIEA and the SFDM will serve as the catalysts for this growth.

As it turns out, the timing to start the FIEA couldn’t be better. Recent expansion by Entertainment Arts in Orlando has created a natural partner for this innovative program.

FIEA is a 16-month post-graduate certificate program designed to turn recent college graduates into sought after software creators and designers. The idea of the program is to create an actual working environment complete with desks, computers, work teams and tasks.

The first class for FIEA will start training in September 2005 with the target number of students in the first class to be 50. The plan is to bring in a new class each September, January and May with as many as 200 students involved in the program at one time. Students will have the opportunity to specialize in one of five different areas: 3-D modeling, animation, tech artistry, software design and project management.

Recruitment of the first class is starting in February with the hope that this innovative program will attract the best and the brightest among recent college graduates looking to prepare themselves for the computer game industry. Having one of the giants in the field, Entertainment Arts, located in the community also has the potential to be a major asset for this ambitious project and they have already signed on to be a major contributor to the program. UCF now joins Carnegie Mellon and the University of Southern California as schools partnering with Entertainment Arts.

Also to be housed in the Expo Centre are the Center for Research and Education in the Arts, Technology and Entertainment (CREATE) and the Visual Language concentration, which is an undergraduate concentration through UCF. Students in the Visual Language concentration will specialize in digital media and will have two years of classes at the Expo Centre after spending their first two years at the main UCF campus fulfilling their core class requirements. The first class includes 19 students, who are currently at the Expo Centre. The expectation is to have 30 students in that concentration from each graduating class.