Minor Program Admission

Applications for Spring 2025 minors are now closed. The Fall 2025 application will open week 2 of that semester. 

The Academy offers several minor options for majors in other USC schools who wish to specialize in cross-disciplinary theory and application and design strategy. Each minor provides access to the Academy's unique and extensive maker facilities, as well as the breadth of Academy faculty expertise. Students who declare an Academy minor can specialize in any of the following Academy Minor Options listed below.

For questions about the Academy Minor experience, please contact the following advisers:

Anique James aniqueja@usc.edu
Minors Last Name A-L

Adrian Coson coson@usc.edu
Minors Last Name M-Z

IYA Undergraduate Advising iyadvise@usc.edu

The Health Innovation Minor is intended for undergraduate students at USC who are interested in collaborative health innovations that leverage the complex intersections of health science expertise, societal need, technology, patient active participation, new business/finance models and inclusive policy for health. Through participation in the minor, students will have the opportunity to:

Identify cross-cutting health challenges and understand their components and interrelations;

Create a diverse team with common interests and different view-points surrounding a health innovation challenge of common interest to the team;

Cross-train in the core aspects of a challenge so as to facilitate collaboration and communication;

Collaborate with other team members to prototype a process or product innovation that addresses a chosen challenge;

Investigate the intersectional components of an impactful innovation and co-design elements from different sectors that are tightly coupled within a challenge;

Use the co-design process to introduce disruptive perspectives across and within participating sectors

In the process the students build collaborative innovation skills that are relevant to 21st century environments with an emphasis on health applications for diverse populations. The skills include systems thinking, cross-sector collaboration, integrated innovation,  iterative improvement, team-building, project management, design strategy, inclusive design. 

The minor is a collaborative effort between: Iovine and Young Academy (IYA); Keck School of Medicine, Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kaufman School of Dance, Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, Davis School of Gerontology, Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering; The Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, and the Institute for Creative Technologies.

See the USC Catalogue for complete information on the Health Innovation Minor.

The minor in Designing Products provides a deeper understanding of the design process leading to the creation of consumer products and services, including the fundamentals of design strategy and human-centered design as they relate to successful ideation and launch of new ideas. Students will learn the methods by which professional product design decisions are made through an intense studio-based curriculum, and will be guided through hands-on application of acquired knowledge and skills in the areas of user research, market opportunity, consumer insights, competitive analysis, ideation, 3D form development, production methodologies, branding, packaging, marketing and distribution.


Utilizing state-of-the-art physical and digital production facilities in Iovine and Young Hall, the Designing Products minor course of study focuses not just on the process of refining a product’s function and aesthetic qualities, but also on determining its relevance to society, and its desirability, feasibility and viability as a potential solution to problems facing for- or non-profit market environments.

See the USC Catalogue for complete information on the Designing Products Minor. 

Extended Reality (XR) focuses on the extended physical human experience through multimodal digital tools and participatory narrative processes. It encompasses the emerging areas of augmented and virtual reality as well as distributed, context specific interactions realized through custom arrays of sensing and multimodal displays. Modular and multimodal narrative components are composed into extended reality experiences through active user participation. Extended reality also necessitates novel intellectual property, marketing and distribution techniques. Applications range from entertainment to commerce, communication, learning, fashion, mobility, health, productivity and social applications. Through the minor in Extended Reality Design and Development, designers, entrepreneurs and developers will explore the interconnection of narrative, space construction, software development, hardware engineering and user experience. The minor will provide a robust core foundation combined with bespoke learning experiences and industry insights to help students chart new paths in creating diverse experiences and careers that are immersive, future-facing with significant potential for societal impact. The XR minor will help innovators create groundbreaking impact in areas including med-tech, collective decision making systems, augmented intelligence, product design, augmented manufacturing, hybrid learning, brand marketing, and new areas that are yet to be defined.

See the USC Catalogue for complete information on the Extended Reality Design and Development Minor.

Extended Reality Design and Development Minor

Disruptive innovation results from a discovery that radically changes an existing economic or social system. Successful entrepreneurs understand that disruption is only the beginning, and lasting innovation requires both creativity in generating fresh, bold new ideas, and an understanding of the constant interplay of economic, technological, cultural and social forces that drive the use and consumption of products, goods and services. Innovators who maintain success and momentum over long periods have learned to anticipate and adapt to trends by focusing on the needs and opportunities presented by society itself, and by utilizing the techniques of human-centered design to identify and solve problems that matter. This minor offering from USC’s revolutionary Iovine and Young Academy offers a uniquely interdisciplinary, hands-on approach to provide students with the knowledge and skills to understand, nurture and drive innovation. The course work in this minor delivers a range of fundamental theories, frameworks and experiences to augment and enhance the knowledge students are gaining in their majors with an understanding of the techniques, methods and methodologies of the world’s greatest innovators.

Additional electives, including in other schools at USC, will be considered through student advisement.

See the USC Catalogue for complete information on the Disruptive Innovation Minor. 

The Designing for Digital Experiences minor provides students in all fields of study an opportunity to gain essential knowledge and skills in interaction design. Courses focus on the tools required to implement powerful interactive visual and touch experiences, as well as the conceptual and theoretical knowledge necessary to apply universal standards for human-centered design. The minor is of particular interest to students wishing to further develop highly sought-after specializations such as interaction design, data visualization, app design, social media marketing and digital art direction.

See the USC Catalogue for complete information on the Designing for Digital Experiences Minor. 

Departmental clearance ("D-Clearance") is permission for a student to register for a class. Class sections with a "D" designation are restricted by the department offering the course, requiring students to obtain the department's permission ("D" clearance) before attempting to register.

Please email iyadvise@usc.edu about course availability and D-Clearance for non-majors.                                                                    