After more than a decade without reassessment, the Design Fundamentals program in the College of Design is being revamped into a two-semester program for the fall 2008 semester, according Marvin Malecha, dean of the College of Design.

The new program is called the First-Year Experience, which explores three basic areas of design to achieve more depth, Malecha said.

The first area will focus on exposing freshmen to the breadth of design history across multiple design disciplines.

“We want the freshmen to get the idea that there is a great legacy of design across all the disciplines,” Malecha said. “This will essentially empower them because they will have a much broader understanding about the designing world and designer’s influences.”

Malecha said the second area of the program will be an expansion of the current design thinking course into two semesters instead of just one.

“Students will take the traditional Design Thinking course in the fall semester, and in the spring take a follow up of design methods,” Malecha said. “This follow-up course is an equivalent substance that not only thinks about the design thinking, language and the methods that underline critical thought, but at how that is specifically applied to each discipline.”

According to Malecha, First-Year Experience will also change the studio experience students have to two semesters, just as it was several years ago.

“Restoring it to a one-year experience of studio in both fall and spring would reinstate the interdisciplinary nature of the first year, and would again give common tools across the design disciplines.

Julianne Gonski, a junior in art and design, feels the changes being made to the Design Fundamentals program aren’t necessary.

“I didn’t really feel jipped in my education,” Gonski said. “I don’t think it needed to change but I’m sure the changes will still be good.”

According to Malecha, the program changes were prompted by student and faculty dissatisfaction.

“We had members of our faculty that found the design fundamentals area disconnected from the rest of the college, and we were sensing the course had ceased to be as challenging as it should be,” Malecha said.

Malecha noted that the dissatisfaction in the program was due to the fact that the program had not been evaluated in 10 to 15 years.

“Nothing should be left that long without substantive discussion,” she said. “Everything needs to be in assessment and reevaluation continuously.”

To create the new curriculum for the program, Malecha appointed a group of 8 to 10 faculty and administrators to examine the students’ entire first-year experience and what sets them up for further study in the College of Design and the University.

“We’re trying to get a mix of faculty members because we’d like to begin the discussions very soon about who the specific teachers of all of these courses will be so we can get them on board very quickly,” Malecha said.

Malecha said the current professors in the Design Fundamentals program will be assessed and may not necessarily become professors in the First-Year Experience program. However, John Tector, the associate dean of the College of Design, will be the director of the First Year Experience Program.

“This is a signal to the freshmen and anyone looking to enter the College of Design of how important we think this is; it’s the dean’s office that’s going to be watching over the quality of the First-Year Experience,” Malecha said.

Malecha noted that students will still have to be a design major to participate, due to the lack of “space and resources” to teach students outside the College of Design.

Toni Chester, a sophomore in graphic design, said she is glad to see changes are being made in the program.

“It’ll be good to explore other areas of design, since right now we just have one semester where we touch on one project from each department, which isn’t really enough,” Chester said.

Malecha also agrees that this will be a positive and necessary change for the College of Design.

“I really value design experience for first-year students, and the last thing I would like to see happen is for this to go away,” Malecha said. “What we’re doing here is growing, improving and designing an experience that will truly be one of the best in the nation.”