WKU News

Western Kentucky University will be home to the first Bachelor of Science degree in User Experience in Kentucky. 

On Thursday, the Council on Postsecondary Education approved the STEM-designated program, giving the university authorization to begin enrolling students for fall 2025.

Aimed to equip students with expertise in design principles, technical development and research methodologies, the academic program will prepare students to create user-centered digital products, including websites, phone apps, games, wearable tech and dashboards.

This interdisciplinary program will be co-located in the Potter College of Arts & Letters (PCAL) and the Ogden College of Science and Engineering (OCSE) as it merges technical expertise from Computer Science (OCSE) and the creative, human-centered design focus from Art & Design (PCAL). It is the first of its kind in Kentucky to combine these fields into a comprehensive degree, and the first UX degree offered in the state. 
 
“This Bachelor of Science in User Experience is not only unique because it’s a new and growing discipline, but because it’s a cross-college program,” said Leah Spalding, Assistant Professor of UX Design in the WKU Department of Art & Design. “User experience is the process of designing, researching and creating technological interfaces. It can be thought of as digital product design.” 
 
The UX Bachelor of Science degree will equip students with practical, in-demand skills across various roles.

“This new degree rounds out our UX curriculum, stated Kristina Arnold, Chair of WKU Art & Design. “We currently offer both a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a UX concentration, which contains a robust foundation in art, design and art history classes; and a 6-course UX Certificate, that serves as an academic add-on for any major. As UX is inherently an interdisciplinary field, this new degree gives those students interested in approaching UX from a computer science pathway an option for a major program.”
 
The degree grew out of a five-year partnership between the WKU Department of Art & Design and The WKU School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and is based on student interest and demand. Many students surveyed indicated a preference for approaching UX from a STEM perspective. “I like design and web development, and I think it would be the perfect mix of arts and science for me,” said one current WKU student about the program.

UX is a new, emerging and fast-developing academic discipline. There are currently 150 programs globally, including those at the graduate, undergraduate and certificate levels. Within the U.S. there are approximately 50 programs, with only a handful of them at the undergraduate level.

UX job titles vary and may include jobs such as user experience designer, user interface designer, product designer, service experience designer, information architect, front-end web developer, digital designer, user researcher and UX researcher.

Roles require knowledge of design thinking, user research, prototyping, usability testing and front-end development—skills covered extensively in the program's curriculum. Given the growing demand for user-centered design across industries like tech, healthcare, e-commerce, and entertainment, the job market for UX professionals is rapidly expanding. 

“Our new UX BS reflects the way tomorrow’s products will be built—by teams who speak both the language of code and the language of people,” said Mark Simpson, Associate Professor in Art & Design and author of the original UX coursework at WKU. “By collaborating with the Department of Computer Science, we are giving students an academic program that values aesthetics, usability and functionality in equal measure.”

The program passed approval by the Western Kentucky University Board of Regents at the first quarterly meeting of the year on February 14. 

For more information about the UX program at WKU, visit www.wku.edu/ux.

Contact: Jace Lux, jace.lux@wku.edu

 - WKU -

Western Kentucky University prides itself on positioning its students, faculty and staff for long term success. As a student-centered, applied research university, WKU helps students expand on classroom learning by integrating education with real-world applications in the communities we serve. Our hilltop campus is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which was recently named by Reader’s Digest as one of the nicest towns in America, just an hour’s drive from Nashville, Tennessee.