Overview

Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is a public institution that specializes in architecture, engineering, and technical education. Established in collaboration with MIT, MIT faculty and staff worked closely with SUTD faculty and staff to develop the undergraduate curriculum, the pedagogical practices used on campus, and the co-curricular offerings for students. SUTD offer four degree programs: Architecture and Sustainable Design, Engineering Product Development, Engineering Systems and Design, and Information Systems Technology and Design. Students choose their majors after the third term.

The first class of undergraduate students began their studies at SUTD in 2012.

Location: Singapore

Number of 1^st years: ~470

Total Students: ~1800*

Faculty: ~160

*This number includes undergraduates and graduate students, although undergraduates make up the majority.

Programs of Note

The following are noteworthy programs or practices that differ from MIT offerings. Unless otherwise stated, assumptions should not be made about the effectiveness of these programs and/or practices.

Curriculum

SUTD redefines what is traditionally thought of as the first-year/freshman year in the U.S. to be “Freshmore” terms. These are the first three terms of the undergraduate experience.

During the Freshmore terms, students receive a solid foundation in math and science. In Term 2, all SUTD students take a course on design, taught from the perspective of both architecture and engineering. A strength of having the design course taught by both engineering and architecture faculty is that it introduces students to different ways of problem identification and solving. The multidisciplinary design course also gives SUTD students a common language with which to discuss design. In Term 3, students take three introductory engineering subjects that are unique to SUTD - “Modelling the Systems World”, “Engineering in the Physical World”, and “The Digital World”. The Freshmore curriculum also includes two Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) subjects: World Texts and Interpretations and Theorizing Society, the Self, and Culture.

During the Freshmore terms, students take classes together in “cohorts” of ~50 students to foster collaboration and a sense of belonging. Each cohort is given dedicated classroom space that serves as a social space, too. Instead of students traveling to different classrooms for different courses, faculty come to them. Freshmore courses are mostly interactive, incorporating hands-on activities such as simulations and demonstrations.

Big Design

Design is woven throughout a student’s experience at SUTD: beginning with small, more tightly defined projects in individual subjects, progressing to multidisciplinary projects that cut across the curriculum, and culminating in more specialized, open-ended design projects and capstone experiences. In the freshmore terms, students participate in “designettes,” hours-long to week-long design challenges that either target a given subject’s concept or integrate the current term’s course content.

An example of a week-long designette that 3^rd term Freshmore students have worked on in the past is the design of an autonomous delivery system for a perishable good, such as milk. This design project incorporated concepts from Engineering in the Physical World (which covers concepts from thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluids), Introduction to Biology, The Digital World (a course on Python programming and controls), and The Systems World (a course on linear algebra and optimization). In teams of 4-5, students were able to use class time and recitation time to work on the design project. The subject instructors were available for mentorship.

Academic Calendar

SUTD’s academic calendar incorporates dedicated trimesters for students to do internships or study abroad, removing a primary barrier to participation in these activities, i.e, falling “off track” with your academic studies. One of these internship/study abroad trimesters occurs after the 3^rd term of the Freshmore experience, the other occurs during the students’ junior year. Over 70% of SUTD students study abroad, all SUTD students do at least one internship, and all SUTD students have the opportunity to participate in undergraduate research (but the percentage that do participate is unavailable).

Gender Diversity

SUTD values gender diversity and has initiatives in place to increase the representation of women in engineering and architecture fields in Singapore.