Building an Industrial Design Doctoral Degree in an Umbrella Ph.D. Program: the Problems and Benefits

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1 Building an Industrial Design Doctoral Degree in an Umbrella Ph.D. Program: the Problems and Benefits Lorraine Justice Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), USA Abstract Several design schools in the United States would like to start doctoral design degrees but lack the support, resources and faculty with doctoral credentials and so they must consider an umbrella structure. An umbrella structure combines several related, or not-so-related, disciplines under the title of one degree. This paper briefly examines both public and private universities that house doctoral design programs in the United States. Both public and private school situations have problems and benefits that impact the curriculum design and number of students supported for degrees. Georgia Tech is a public research institution that will start doctoral studies in industrial design in the near future, but first the appropriate curricular fit must be addressed within the College of Architecture umbrella structure, and with other programs in the United States and abroad. This process may assist others who are structuring doctoral programs in design who wish to make original curricular contributions to global design. -55-

2 Papers Introduction The design schools in the United States reside in public or private institutions. Examples of design programs in public universities are Arizona State University, Georgia Tech and North Carolina State University. Examples of design programs in private universities are Carnegie Mellon and the Illinois Institute of Technology. Public universities are largely funded through state and federal resources, tuition fees and endowments. Private universities are largely funded through endowments and tuition fees. Both public and private universities rely on extensive amounts of research funding to augment tuition, government funding, donations and any other funding for specific projects. Tuition fees at private universities are usually much higher than at public universities. The public universities are given mandates by the United States and state governments to serve the greater population and keep tuition costs down so that a greater cross-section of the population can attend school and receive an education. The tuition costs affect programs that want to start graduate degrees. Since tuition fees at private universities are much higher than at public universities, it may be more difficult to support doctoral design students unless funding is found to support them over four years. The public universities have an easier time supporting graduate students because of the lower tuition costs. This means that, potentially, a greater number of design students can move through the public universities once the doctoral design degrees are established. The quality of the programs will be held to the highest level of the university, state, and government accrediting standards. However, the public schools must move through layers of approval for new graduate degrees, from the department level all the way through the state legislature. Private schools, in general, only need to move through their own institution for approval and do not usually require state approvals for all degrees. While most public universities have lower tuition fees and can support more graduate students the difficulty lies in the fact that the programs rarely have funding to support new faculty and administrative staff needed to run an industrial design doctoral program. Much of the reasoning for this is the design programs reside in art, architecture or engineering schools and rarely have the political power, resources or faculty size and credentials to start their own program. This situation is causing some public programs to request higher tuition rates. This, of course, is a generalized view of the public and private higher institutions in the US, and both types of schools are working successfully to overcome their problems. Both Carnegie Mellon and the Illinois Institute of Technology have attracted enough external funding to support several graduate students in their doctoral programs. The public schools are able to request tuition differentials to cover the costs of supporting a doctoral program and are able to draw upon the other doctoral design programs that have emerged in the United States to move these program requests through the state legislature. In conclusion, the benefits for private schools that start doctoral design degrees are freedom of curriculum design and the time factor in setting up a degree because they are not required to get state approvals. The problems for the private schools who want to set up doctoral design programs are the cost of the tuition students need to pay to attend the program and gaining multi-disciplinary -56-

3 interaction that is not built into the degree. This may limit the number of students who attend the private school programs, unless internal funding can be provided, and the scope of expertise brought to the students. The benefits of public schools are that they can accept and support more doctoral students because of the lower tuition costs. The problems with public schools are the layers of approvals required before a program can be put in place and the design by committee curriculum approach. Examples - Private School Stand Alone Doctoral Design Degrees and Research Areas of Concentration Carnegie Mellon University The Carnegie Mellon School of Design is an example of a program that built its success on the foundation of a well-respected undergraduate and masters program. The areas of concentration (Carnegie Mellon 2003) in the doctoral design program are: design theory; interaction design; typography and information design; new product development. These foci are a direct extension of the expertise of the faculty within the School of Design who support doctoral studies. Illinois Institute of Technology The Illinois Institute of Technology has positioned itself as a professional graduate school that delivers designers and design managers with research skills. It, too, is a private school and the curriculum was put together by the program faculty and approved by the institute. The areas of research topics at the Illinois Institute of Technology are given according to the faculty who are part of the doctoral program. The following topics are listed as areas for active research (Illinois Institute 2003): general design theory/methodology and its application; creating value by design; value and values; design policy and economic development; the tension between globalism and localism; supporting an early product definition; interactive systems; modeled based representation of cultural factors in interactive systems design; understanding information processing through user study; searching for information; using multi-modal information; and learning through information pick up and use. -57-

4 Papers The private universities such as Carnegie Mellon and Illinois Institute of Technology have their own doctoral programs housed within design schools, resulting in a very rich design curriculum. They have structured the coursework for the degrees from the design program and would not consider other disciplines they would not have ordinarily included. But as you can see the foci of those programs are very closely tied to issues that the design faculty find important. In some cases this may lead to more inward looking issues in design rather than outward looking issues in design, even though both of these programs are interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary in nature. Examples - Public School Umbrella Doctoral Design Degrees Arizona State University The design program at Arizona State University is housed in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design. The doctoral program is called the environmental design and planning degree (Arizona State 2002) and lists the following areas of concentration for research studies: Design- includes the study of architecture, building science, graphic design, interior design, and landscape architecture; History, Theory and Criticism- focuses on cultural and theoretical issues in the history of the environment and includes the study of architectural environment planning, interior design, landscape architecture, and urbanism; Planning- includes the study of environmental resource management, the landscape architecture, planning and urban design. North Carolina State University The programs in the College of Design at North Carolina State University are visual communication, industrial design and environmental design. The two areas of concentration for doctoral studies are (North Carolina 2003): Community and Environmental Design; Information Design. North Carolina has the benefit of design areas that are close in nature and the umbrella structure does not have to cover such a wide territory of disciplines. Current Georgia Tech Umbrella Program in the College of Architecture The Georgia Tech Industrial Design Program is now positioned to begin structuring a new industrial design focus within the current umbrella Ph.D. program in the College of Architecture. The College of Architecture Ph.D. currently includes the disciplines of architecture, building construction and city and regional planning. Within those fields of study are common areas of focus for students to pursue a Ph.D.(Georgia Tech 2002): -58-

5 City and regional planning - the studies of land use planning, urban design, economic development, land and housing economics, urban and regional development, information systems, transportation planning, and environmental policy; Architecture, Culture and Behavior- human responses to the design of buildings and urban space, including morphological studies, studies of environmental perception and cognition, facilities programming and evaluation. Architectural History, Theory and Criticism- architectural history, philosophy, criticism and practice, including designed philosophies, methods and criticism. Building Technology- technology and design construction, including the development and application of advanced knowledge in materials, construction processes industrial systems and environmental factors. Building Construction- risk management, robotics and automation, indoor air, design-build, construction development and management, life cycle cost management, and integrated facility management. Design Computing- development and application of the information technologies in support of creative design and building including parametric geometric modeling, design databases and electronic design environments, building models, direct fabrication of designs and visualization. The challenge for the Industrial Design Program at Georgia Tech is to make a philosophical fit within this mix of already established areas of research in the College of Architecture, and still establish its own contribution. The industrial design program will need to establish its own identity and communicate that nationally and internationally. The Industrial Design Program currently has a new Master of Industrial Design (MID) degree along with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design (BSID) degree. The Industrial Design Program has closely aligned itself with the colleges of biomechanics, computing, engineering, industrial systems engineering, psychology, and management, and more. Students from other disciplines at Georgia Tech take industrial design courses on the graduate level and our students take graduate level courses in the other disciplines to support their MID project or thesis. It is important that the design Ph.D. students learn how to conduct proper research for their area of focus. So if a student is working on the software interface design for a airplane cockpit, he or she will need to understand and utilize the industrial design process as well as conduct research in aerospace engineering in relation to that project. This will affect the makeup of their committee, coursework, and type of research to be conducted. We feel that this is a benefit that our students will gain diverseness in their studies and an expertise in research in a field other than industrial design. In other words if they are working closely with the psychology department in regard to their design problem they will need to take course work related to research, statistics, and other areas important to the field of psychology. Important inquiries to help Georgia Tech design a doctoral program of study are: What are the other universities offering in doctoral design studies and how can Georgia Tech differentiate the research and contribution of their future Ph.D. design students? What are the strengths of the umbrella disciplines in the College of Architecture (COA) in relation to industrial design? What core courses are offered as part of the COA umbrella Ph.D. and how would they relate to an industrial design -59-

6 Papers doctoral curriculum? What else, in the character and makeup of the other disciplines on campus can contribute to an umbrella Ph.D. in design? What are the next steps? Future Action Items In his paper The Study of Design: Doctoral Education and Research in a New Field of Inquiry, Buchanan (1998: 20) lists four fundamental issues that must be addressed when starting the process of designing a new degree. These four issues (paraphrased) are: Who will teach and who will be taught? What is the structure, content and experience the program will provide? Which resources are needed financially and intellectually support the program? What are the goals of the program that provide the objectives and evaluative criteria? The first action that will be taken by the Georgia Tech Industrial Design Program is to establish an international doctoral advisory board in the Autumn of 2003 to examine the existing College of Architecture Ph.D. and the strengths of Georgia Tech as an institution of higher learning. The advisory committee and faculty will help to set the goals for a program that contributes new design knowledge and disseminates it on a local and global level. The second action will be for the director of the Industrial Design Program to prepare a report, signed off by the Industrial Design Faculty and Advisory Committee, which explains the vision for the doctoral work, the national placement within the research foci of the other national and international doctoral design programs, and suggestions for curriculum. This report will be brought to the Dean of the College of Architecture and the Director of the COA Ph.D. Program to begin the process of state approval for doctoral studies in industrial design. Conclusion The benefits of an umbrella program are rich in diversity of people and their expertise, who are involved in the program by the very nature of the structure. The interaction of these areas of expertise is built into the structure through combined core courses and committees. The financial responsibilities for one program to handle a doctoral program on their own are lessened when other programs are involved. In addition, the industrial design program will benefit from examining other disciplines and their Ph.D. research and programs. The current umbrella programs residing in public research universities allow low tuition fees and possibly a greater cross-section of the population to attend graduate school that might not be able to afford a public school. The problems with umbrella programs, however, are that one program does not have total control over their curriculum and they are required to design a curriculum with a more diverse committee. This may hinder their areas of focus, progress of making their way through the layers of approvals, and loss of control over resources. Georgia Tech Industrial Design has the opportunity to proceed with an umbrella doctoral program in industrial design. The industrial design program will not have full control over the core courses that design doctoral students to take, but it will certainly benefit from the other areas of knowledge -60-

7 and expertise to assist with design research. The industrial design field does not have enough faculty with doctoral credentials to oversee graduate research in design and this is true of Georgia Tech. We will need expertise in research from other fields to help us move our students farther and faster than what we can do alone. This will give our field time to examine what others do and see how that may benefit us before forming our own field s doctoral studies. References Arizona State University Archive: Arizona State University Graduate Catalog. Available from URL: [Accessed 23 May 2003]. Buchanan, R The Study of Design: Doctoral Education and Research in a New Field of Inquiry, in: Doctoral Education in Design: Proceedings of the Ohio Conference, Eds. Buchanan, Doordan, Justice, Margolin. Pittsburgh, PA:CMU Carnegie Mellon University Programs. Available from URL: [Accessed 24 May 2003]. Georgia Institute of Technology Ph.D. Institute of Technology. Program Handbook: College of Architecture. Georgia Illinois Institute of Technology Institute of Design: Research topics Available from URL: [Accessed 24 May 2003]. North Carolina State University College of Design Programs and Courses. URL: [Accessed 24 May 2003]. -61-