About
About
Embedded Files
Design For Impact Course Experience
Design For Impact Course Experience
History
History
'Design for Impact' is an interdisciplinary, interinstitutional project-based learning human-centered design course often offered as an internship experience. DFI was conceptualized, designed, and launched four years ago by Julia DeVoy (Boston College); Daniel Harding, Clemson University; Tsailu Liu, NC State; and Amanda Morris, Virginia Tech) to provide our students with an immersive interdisciplinary, interuniversity, intergenerational design thinking experience. During this internship course project, liberal arts students from Boston College, work with those from Virginia Tech College of Engineering, Clemson University Department of Architecture, and Wentworth Institute of Technology, Department of Industrial Design.
The Course Structure
The Course Structure
Students from each university enroll in a special learning /independent course at their home institution. Over the years, the founding faculty of DFI have fine-tuned a structural pedagogy that is hybrid in nature and yields rich experiential outcomes. It begins with all participating students meeting in person to kick off the semester, meet their teammates, and understand the project details. This is followed by meeting weekly online as a large group for design studio lectures and critique sessions with leadership faculty from all four institutions serving as principal reviewers. Students are instructed in creative design-driven thinking processes, principles of interdisciplinary teamwork, and interdisciplinary project management. The students meet for a second time in person in the middle of the semester to share, iterate, and refine their design directions. The semester culminates with a final in-person summit where students gather to present their solutions to a jury of faculty.
Intercollegiate + Interdisplinary Approach
Intercollegiate + Interdisplinary Approach
Design for Impact is more than a course—it’s a collaborative initiative that reshapes how students from multiple institutions and disciplines, who are unfamiliar with each other, come together and collectively design and respond to the pressing needs of society and the planet.
The Need for Interdisciplinary Collaboration: The traditional monoculture in higher education often restricts innovation and creative thought. By contrast, our approach encourages students to step beyond their academic confines, fostering an environment where interdisciplinary interaction is not just encouraged—it’s essential.
Our Distinctive Approach: Students participate in teams that tackle design challenges throughout a semester-long project offered in a hybrid format. There are three in-person touch points through out the semester facilitated by accomplished faculty. The teams undergo rigorous training in design thinking and project management, collaborative working while also engaging in critical real-world application. Each phase of the project—from ideation to execution—is supported by a blend of individual study and collective endeavor, mirroring the collaborative nature of the professional world.
Boston College
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Virginia Tech University
Clemson University
Instructors
Instructors
Boston College
Boston College
Julia DeVoy
Julia DeVoy
Associate Dean of the Lynch School of Education and Human Development
Sunand Bhattacharya
Sunand Bhattacharya
Associate Vice Provost for Design and Innovation Strategies
Dean Julia DeVoy, Ph.D., MTS, MBA is a developmental psychologist, academic program innovator and entrepreneur. Julia has been involved in social impact, social-entrepreneurship, design-thinking, and social justice work, both nationally and internationally since 1989. Dr. DeVoy, who earned a B.A. from St. Lawrence University, an M.T.S. from Harvard University, and an M.B.A. from Oxford University, in addition to her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Boston College, has been affiliated with BC since 1993. Dr. DeVoy is the 2019 co-founder of the Design for Impact initiative with Prof. Dan Harding, Dr. David Gray, and Dean Lu Liu.
Associate Vice Provost for Design and Innovation, Sunand Bhattacharya. is a learning architect, design educator, and an industrial designer; Sunand helped spearhead the design and development of BC's human-centered engineering program. His office is tasked to help build a future-forward culture of collaborative research and innovation across Boston College using design-driven methodologies. This includes management of design thinking projects, "making" at BC and other education-related endeavors including curriculum research and development for new academic programs and campus initiatives.
Clemson University
Clemson University
Dan Harding
Dan Harding
Director, Community Research and Design Center (CR+DC) and Professor of Architecture
Chloe Voltaire
Chloe Voltaire
Lecturer at Clemson University
Dan Harding is a Professor of Architecture and Community Design+Build and serves as the director of the Community Research and Design Center (CR+DC) and the Architecture + communityBUILD graduate certificate program (A+cB) striving to ensure that South Carolina communities intently embrace the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainability. In 2013, DesignIntelligence named Harding as one of the thirty most influential design educators in the country, citing the impact of his community-centric work.
Chloe is a Lecturer in the School of Architecture at Clemson University. She graduated with a B.S in Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Master of Architecture Degree from Clemson University. She has experience in both Architecture, as a designer and Construction, in preconstruction management.
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Aziza Cyamani
Aziza Cyamani
Assistant Professor of Industrial Design
Simon Williamson
Simon Williamson
Professor of Industrial Design
Sedef Doganer
Sedef Doganer
Dean of the School of Architecture and Design
Aziza Cyamani is a multidisciplinary designer with experience in user-centered design, visual communication, product development, and sustainable systems. Currently, she is an assistant professor of Industrial Design at Wentworth Institute of Technology.
Simon Williamson is a professor of Industrial Design in the Provost's Office at the School of Architecture and Design at Wentworth Institute of Technology. He graduated from the University of Northumbria and holds a Masters in Design from the Royal College of Art. Before he began teaching, his professional range included the design and manufacture of his own line of desktop consumer goods, old school modelmaking and product development of toy concepts through to the prototype phase, as well as toy inventions.
Sedef Doganer is the Dean of the School of Architecture and Design at Wentworth Institute of Technology and a Professor of Architecture. Before joining Wentworth, she was a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she held roles as Department Chair and Associate Dean of Design, Inclusion, and Engaged Scholarship. Her research focuses on the intersection of architecture and tourism, with recent studies in heritage tourism, historic preservation, and sustainable tourism development. Dr. Doganer holds multiple degrees in architecture from Istanbul Technical University, is a registered architect in Turkey, and serves on the ICOMOS International Cultural Tourism Committee and the board of Docomomo/NE.
Virginia Tech University
Virginia Tech University
David Gray
David Gray
Assistant Professor and Assistant Department Head for Undergraduate Programs in the Engineering Education Department
Dr. Gray's research focuses on disciplinary identity formation and the development and administration of curricular and extracurricular interdisciplinary project based learning programs.
Page updated
Report abuse