弗吉尼亚联邦大学

The M.F.A. in Design with a concentration in design studies defines and inhabits an area between design disciplines. The purpose of the program is to produce designers who are experts at negotiating and utilizing elements of many different fields to construct new tailored experiences.

Tomorrow’s designers must be able to understand their audiences, collaborators and patrons in original and authentic ways. Global cultures already experience design in a singular fashion. The practices at VCUQ combine graphics, interaction, engineering, systems, architecture, and fashion and product design into a merged experience. Designers who are able to work outside their individual discipline will be at an advantage. The designers of the future will need to navigate between forms of practice, combining elements and skills to create new products, visuals, environments and interactions.

VCUQ is looking for creative, motivated, hardworking, self-directed individuals willing to engage with challenging topics. The program sets high demands on its students, requiring them to familiarize and grasp the myriad of variables involved in meaningful design, while simultaneously having the discipline and rigor to formulate their own assessment of what being a designer in all its guises entails today.

Students in this program should be able to question; be open to explore and experiment; stay true to ethical foundations; lead and be bold, while being open and flexible to adjust to shifting paradigms. The school strives to expose students to a variety of tools, materials and methods, while providing the theoretical background and research methodologies that will allow each student to develop their own unique ideas.

The M.F.A. in Design with a concentration in design studies celebrates the amorphous notion of what is called “empirical vagueness,” a term that encapsulates the simultaneously analytical, yet intuitive, fashion in which a design endeavor is developed. Students, alumni and faculty all play a role in exploring and fostering this as an essential, if inherently open-ended, calling.

Program goals

• Creative leadership: Students will achieve mastery in creative leadership, with the skills and knowledge needed to achieve success as design professionals and entrepreneurs, educators, and researchers, and they will be able to creatively engage with the broad design community to bring added value to the regional economy, society and culture.
• Integrated research: Students will integrate practice and theory to ensure the highest level of critical knowledge and to make meaningful contributions to pedagogy and teaching in the design disciplines. The program provides increased focus and visibility for individual and collaborative research activity that has an applied focus.
• Interdisciplinary emphasis: Students will achieve high levels of creativity, literacy and knowledge across the design disciplines.
• Community impact: Students will engage and raise social awareness.
• Career development: The program will develop graduates with skills and knowledge to make meaningful contributions to pedagogy and teaching in the design disciplines. It also will provide opportunities that encourage students to engage and present their work in connection with the professional world.