Strategic Design Fellows
This program is also open to Studio Art majors
Do you want to:
- Explore your creative side while taking classes in the business school?
- Enjoy the challenge of solving problems by empathizing with the customer?
- Develop design literacy by learning how to identify good design?
- Strengthen crucial business skills such as creative problem solving through design thinking?
- Connect with SDF alumni return to campus, in-person and virtually, to share their expertise and remain as networking connections for the undergraduates?
Design thinking is a hot topic in today’s business world. Design thinkers focus on five steps: empathizing with the customer to learn what the real issues are that need to be solved, defining the problem, ideating by brainstorming, making lists, writing down ideas and generating possible solutions, creating a plan and then testing the idea and seeking feedback from others. This is what Strategic Design and Innovation Fellows is all about.
Teams of juniors in BMGT458A will create retail concepts and pitch their ideas to a set of real estate developers. In the senior year, SDF students will rebrand existing companies or products and develop campaigns for promoting the rebranding efforts. They, too, will pitch their ideas to seasoned businesspersons for feedback.
In addition, during the fall of their junior year, students will receive instruction on the Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop) and complete a personal branding project among other projects worthy of a portfolio. The program also offers an advanced course in computer graphics where students learn Figma and InVision. Juniors complete BMGT458A with an online portfolio to help them obtain internships and full-time employment.
Design literacy, the ability to identify and appreciate good design, also plays a prominent role in the program. Students will learn design principles and best practices that can be applied to the design of products, packaging, interactive websites, UX, wayfinding, retail stores, workplaces, presentations, graphics, and fashion.
The program’s curriculum and co-curricular activities are designed to produce business leaders who can generate strategically sound and creative design decisions. Strategic Design Fellows will master the creative problem-solving and innovative thinking skills and experiences along with marketing strategy and design techniques needed to be competitive in today’s job market. This program is intentionally interdisciplinary, with mutual benefit to be gained by collaboration between marketing students and design students in developing creative business solutions.
Mary Harms is the faculty champion for this program.