Undergraduate program- Design major

The Undergraduate Program is based in the Mechanical Engineering school and we have no plans to change the basic math/science/ and engineering basics of the major. We still assume that the student wants to be an engineer - the only question is "what kind?"

Freshman year is, therefore, still dominated by the math (20 units) and physics (12 units) requirements, as well as the University's Intro to Humanities (IHUM) and Program in writing and rhetoric (PWR) requirements. This year, for the first time, Banny taught a Freshman Seminar called "Thinking Like a Designer", the first time to our knowledge that the design curriculum was introduced in Freshman year. This is an experiment to see if we can attract motivated students earlier than Sophomore year. We'll see what the conversion rate is next year.

In the Sophomore Year we want to get students ready to declare the major and that generally means they try-out design by taking Art 60: Basic Design and ME101: Visual Thinking. If that goes well then we generally recommend they finish up any math and science requirements and get the psychology requirements (2 classes) out of the way. They sometimes can complete and engineering breath course as well.

The Junior and Senior Year program is being expanded so that there is a required Design class every quarter. That's adding two new Design classes next year, in a sequence that looks like the chart at the beginning of this blog entry

There are two "bookends" in this program. At the beginning we have the Intro class, ME115a, that surveys every element of the Design curriculum and gives the student a taste of the subject. It is a chance for the student (and us) to see if they have any aptitude for the subject. The other end is ME216b: Implementation, where the student demonstrates their learning by executing a capstone project. In between we cover each of the key areas of design thinking in more depth, using project-based learning as our method.

One new class of note is ME115c - Business Factors for Designer - more about that later.