Design Engineering educates the next generation of engineering innovators, design thinkers and impact makers who will be leaders in responding to the world’s most important challenges.
Design Engineering is a Bachelor of Science degree program for students who have a passion to make a positive impact on society and the environment—at the local, national or global scale. Design Engineering provides the most flexible degree structure of any engineering program at Mines, allowing students to apply their design expertise to areas of personal interest, like energy, robotics, community development, or a wide range of other career possibilities.
DESIGN ENGINEERING IS MORE THAN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE
Design Engineering provides hands-on experiences from the start of your education, including working on real-world challenges on interdisciplinary teams and mastering all phases of engineering design, including problem definition, concept generation and solution implementation.
Students in Design Engineering develop deep expertise in integrative design, which bridges traditional problem-solving approaches from engineering, creative design and the social sciences.
Our graduates contribute to the development of advanced technologies that change the world by promoting innovation, sustainability, and social responsibility.
MORE INFORMATION
CONTACT US
Chelsea Salinas
Design Engineering Program Director
303.384.2290
Dean Nieusma
EDS Department Head
303.273.3322
DE Features
- Education in integrative design, which bridges technical, creative and contextual problem solving
- Hands-on engineering project experiences every semester, culminating in a year-long, client-sponsored Capstone design project
- The foundation of all Mines engineering degrees, with common coursework in the fundamentals of mathematics, science and engineering
- A student-selected focus area where you can apply your design expertise to a specific area of practice in preparation for your professional career.
DE Vision
To change the way engineering is taught, learned and practiced, including what it means to be an engineer and how engineers define and solve problems through flexible degree offerings and programs focused on real-world design experiences that emphasize the social, economic, and environmental contexts of engineering.
DE Program Educational Objectives
The objectives of the Engineering, Design, & Society Bachelor of Science in Design Engineering program are to produce graduates who, within five years of graduation, will:
- Apply their creative interpretation of complex problems and propose novel solution concepts within unique social, technical, ethical and environmental constraints.
- Serve as innovators, bridging the gap between social, technical and creative design disciplinary teams, all while incorporating a high level of ethical standards, social consciousness and technical expertise.
- Seek to contribute to interdisciplinary endeavors and establish positions of leadership through service activities within their profession or community.
- Actively engage in lifelong learning, demonstrating continuous professional growth.
The Bachelor of Science in Design Engineering program will seek accreditation by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET in the 2024 cycle, http://www.abet.org.
DE FOCUS AREAS
Explore the variety of focus areas through theme and designated curricular flowcharts below:
ADDRESSING WORLD-WIDE CHALLENGES
FINDING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
INDIVIDUALIZED FOCUS AREA
- Customize a course of study to pursue personal interests and passions
DEGREE QUALITIES:
- Projects and coursework supports student passions
- Integrative design as the primary instructional approach
- Career preparation beyond traditional engineering
- Program flexibility allows students to chart their own paths
Competencies:
- Technical engineering
- Creative design problem solving
- Social contexts and sustainability
- Systems scale innovation
- Professional skills: leadership, entrepreneurship, concept visualization and interdisciplinary collaboration
INTEGRATIVE DESIGN STUDIOS
The core of the DE curriculum is Mines’ signature integrative design studios—a sequence of project- based design studios that integrate technical, creative and contextual aspects of the design challenge. These studios provide design methodologies that apply broadly to technical problem solving and span all of the program’s focus areas. A human-centered design perspective incorporates social, political, environmental and economic dimensions of the design context, leading to more meaningful solutions.
LIFE AFTER MINES
DE graduates can chart their own futures. They will be technically skilled, experienced with innovating problem solving in real-world contexts, able to collaborate across diverse disciplines and ready to lead and innovate in any organizational setting.
In addition to traditional engineering or design careers in technology and product-based industries, DE graduates are ideal candidates for roles in NGOs, start- ups and government agencies, and they are uniquely suited to contribute technical design expertise to the fields of healthcare, policy, law and finance.