Integrative Design Process: “How do I discover opportunities?”

Business Models: “How do I create value?”

Sustainability and Eco-Innovation: “How do I deal with complexity?”

Research Methods: “How do I ask the right questions?”

DEC Advanced Electives: “What does this mean in the real world?”

Capstone: “How do I put it all together?”

By majoring in a program in the Kanbar College of Design, Engineering and Commerce, students retain the core learning of their major while forging new collaborations among designers, engineers and business professionals. The DEC core curriculum offers an integrated educational experience that prepares students to think critically about the world, giving them a multi-dimensional understanding of their rapidly evolving fields. To enhance studies in their majors, all students participate in four core classes plus an integrative senior capstone.

Integrative Design Processes is the first course students take, which introduces them to dealing with ambiguity through finding problems, prototyping and iterating solutions while working in diverse teams of students.

Business Models, the second course in the DEC core, introduces students to the concept of how a value proposition is delivered to customers through infrastructure to create financial, social and environmental value.

Students then choose between Sustainability and Eco-Innovation as options to explore their discipline expertise or industry in a more systemic view using nature as the most resilient model.

Ethnographic Research Methods – the last course students take before their integrated capstone – brings together students’ DEC core studies with the liberal arts and discipline expertise through a focus on understanding people and behavior.

Through this curriculum, students learn effective strategies to innovate across areas of expertise, an approach which adds educational value to each major and prepares students for strategic leadership in their fields.