Design, Innovation, and Society

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Chair: Mark W. Steiner
Chair: Dean Nieusma

The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences offers this dual major program called Design, Innovation, and Society (DIS). The program offers a B.S. degree in DIS as well as the opportunity to dual major in Mechanical Engineering or Management as well as other curricula.

DIS prepares students to become innovative designers capable of developing and designing the advanced products and technologies for the 21st century. Built around a design studio during seven of eight semesters, DIS combines the technical sophistication of Rensselaer’s engineering or management curricula with the aesthetic and cultural insights and vision of the humanities and social sciences disciplines in the DIS curriculum.

Through the DIS core of design studios, students obtain a hands-on opportunity that brings together the major curricula. The accredited mechanical engineering curriculum can also provide a fundamental education in mechanical engineering with a focus on design methodology in general and mechanical design techniques in particular (see sample template below). The management curriculum provides a fundamental education in management with course offerings in product design, marketing, and entrepreneurship if combined with DIS. The DIS curriculum provides a fundamental education in the historical, ethical, cultural, and policy dimensions of product development and innovation, including numerous case studies of successes and failures through which students learn what it takes to be effective leaders of design teams. On this basis, the design studios help students explore and develop their creativity while building a portfolio of design experiences continuously throughout all four years.

The design experiences range over a breadth of problems, from larger systemic problems to smaller focused problems, so that students have broad exposure to all the different applications of design practice. Collectively the  studios are taught as an integrated sequence that give students experiences with the design process that extend from problem identification  to project implementation. The studios also develop students’ skills in using computers and other advanced tools and techniques, as well as in drawing, visualizing, communicating, and working together. In short, the program’s design aspects provide the elements necessary to put students’ creativity to work as leaders of design and innovation, whether it is in a multinational business at the cutting edge of the global marketplace or in a smaller business venture that creates a unique solution to an important  problem.

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