MFA Design

The MFA Design graduate’s vision is not simply to design how things are made, but to shape what the task will be. Rather than acting as mere stylists of technological artifacts, students design experiences. They shape the world by creating new expectations and, in the process, develop a deep understanding of the human environment so that they are equipped to offer fresh perspectives to critical contemporary challenges.

Such sweeping claims are grounded in the concrete. With our institutional commitment to the designer as maker and doer, the studio format is at the heart of the graduate program’s curriculum. Each student will complete at least two extensive team-based studio projects. Following a design development path that begins with rigorous research, they will see the project through multiple phases to completion.

Those final results, whether tangible or not, are shaped and informed by lecture courses in history, business practices, and the social sciences. Interdisciplinary Graduate Seminars are structured to bring together students with experts from a wide variety of fields, in a platform that will stretch and challenge conventional thinking.

There is an opportunity to earn academic credit and gain first-hand experience through formally structured industry-sponsored projects, and students may be offered teaching assistantships in CCS undergraduate programs.