Our information sheet is now live! Please check the “Join” tab for more information about the recruitment process and as always, email duke@designforamerica with any questions. Applications are due Friday, September 20 by noon.
We are also excited to announce our first design workshop will be Monday, September 16 from 6:30-8:30 pm in the Link Classroom 2. Pizza will be provided and it will be a great introduction to the human centered design process, we look forward to seeing you there!
Not only was last week the first week of classes, it was Design for America Duke’s first week on campus as an official DFA studio! In order to establish credibility and clout at Duke, we met with a lot of administrators, professors and organizations to spread the word about DFA and create partnerships.
We met with Matt Nash from the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) who is working on bringing design and innovation to the curriculum and was so excited about DFA. His support and insight are invaluable and we are thrilled to have him as an ally.
We also met with Peter Hollander, the Duke representative from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. Peter has the shared goal of finding a space for design on campus. We think it is so important for Duke students to have access to a place that encourages creativity and doesn’t double as an academic location. Hopefully we can work with Peter this year to find/create a space where DFA and other similar organizations can ideate and prototype most effectively.
Michael Faber is the IT Innovation Program Manager at Duke and he heads the Innovation Co-Lab which is an incubator for students interested in high tech. We talked to Michael about possibly co-sponsoring an “Iconathon” for The Noun Project. The Innovation Co-Lab is like DFA for students focused on technology design and a partnership between our organizations has the potential to bring real impact to Duke/Durham.
In addition to these meetings we spoke with Dean Linda Franzoni (Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at the Pratt School of Engineering), a psychology professor and a drawing professor. It is evident that there is a wave of design coming to Duke and we are so excited to be on its forefront. Now, our main focus is to recruit new members who are as passionate about this mission as we are. We’ve been visiting lectures and took the Student Activities Fair by storm with a walking poster advertisement in order to spread the word about Duke’s newest creative, innovative and proactive organization.
This week we have two information sessions where we invite everyone interested in DFA to come hear more about us!
Yesterday the studio leads and 14 members from last semester met to plan for the coming year; it was our first meeting as an entire team after being officially recognized by DFA National as a studio! Our goals for the meeting were to recap Leadership Studio, finalize the application process, discuss a marketing plan, brainstorm for the workshop and start to project scope. In order to best delegate these tasks we divided into three committees: marketing, workshop planning and a looking forward crew.
Within these groups we did a little team building, DFA style. First, we came up with 30 second pitches about what DFA is and why it is perfect for basically any student on campus. Some repeated themes were that Design for America allows students to use classroom skills in a real world setting to solve actual problems in the community, it is an opportunity to be part of what could (and will!) be a groundbreaking new organization on campus and that DFA offers the unique chance to work with people across all ages and disciplines.
Here are some pictures of the teams hard at work!
As a second team building exercise we gave each committee 30 minutes to build an arcade game only using the “trash” left over from moving into our dorms. In just half an hour the teams created functional and fun games that we played to end the meeting. We tweeted one picture of a game (follow us on twitter @DukeDFA) but here are some more snapshots of our DFA arcade!
We are having information sessions for potential new members Wednesday, September 4 from 5-6 pm and Thursday, September 5 from 5-6 pm, please come if you are interested in learning more about Design for America (or playing fun design games like building an arcade!)
Design For America at Duke University 