What is the Digital Media Academy?

History of DMA

The first year students were enrolled into the the Digital Media Academy was 2012-2013.  Prior to that students were a part of the CADD/COMM (COMM stood for Communications). CADD/COMM reformulated as the Innovative Design and Engineering Academy or IDEA.  As a result there was an opportunity to form an academy dedicated to Media Production.   DMA was originally formed with Digital Media Production classes paired with English.  Over the years, DMA has added Social Science and World Language to its academy.  In 2015-16 Animation was added to DMA, giving it two digital media pathways and three academic sequences.  The first recruiting class for DMA was 20 students, at the start of the 2016-17 school year DMA will have approximately 170 students enrolled.  DMA was an unfunded program for the first two years of its existence. During the 2013-14 school year, DMA was awarded a half year Secondary Specialized (SSP) planning grant by the California Department of Education.  The SSP program seeks to fund new and innovative programs.   DMA has completed projects on behalf of the Elk Grove Food Bank, the Homeless Assistance Resource Team (HART), Capitol Area Development Agency (CADA), and the Sacramento Kings.  Students have won numerous awards and have been recognized across the region for excellence in digital media production.  In addition to enrolling in communications, engineeering, law, and medical programs, students from DMA have matriculated to film programs at Sac State, Cal State Northridge, Chapman University. Our alumni have also graduated from Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism and the University of Southern California's School of Film & Television Production.