I am strongly in favor of the new Design Technology department. However, I also believe that we need to proceed in a way that is respectful of the concerns of the faculty in the College of Human Ecology.

I have great respect for the faculty in the department of Human Centered Design. I also sympathize and understand the concerns of these faculty. With the dissolution of their old departments, many of them have been under existential threat in recent years. I can see how the emotional trauma that they have experienced could cause them to feel threatened with a department that has the potential to overlap with theirs.

With that said, I do not believe that there is significant overlap between the two departments. There many technological aspects of design that HCD neither covers nor is positioned to cover any time the near future. These are aspects of design that AAP is in much a better position to leverage. Design is a large enough discipline that it should span across multiple departments, each with a clear focus of the aspect of design that it is trying to address.

Just like we have to address “social concerns” when we make a new course, so should Design Technology as part of its proposal to make a new department. It would be nice to see a mission statement that makes clear the specific aspects of design that Design Technology feels it is targeting, and how that will influence its faculty hiring over the next few years. And it should be clear why these areas are not already addressed by the current expertise in Human Centered Design.

I also think that we should address the issue of the DESIGN course catalogue code (brought up by the chair of HCD). I understand that AAP needed a course catalogue code to pilot this study with Cornell Tech. But DESIGN is a very loaded term. It is like a department calling itself the Department of Science or the Department of Reading. Design is a broad style of education that many departments engage in. No one department should own this catalogue code. It may seem like a minor issue but students do pay attention to these codes when looking for courses outside their major or comfort zone. This code should be retired and Design Technology should be given an appropriate code that identifies the scope of their program.

Anonymous says:

Bringing the strong design proposal to the senate was very valuable. In part, because it allowed catching the multi-college challenge of accounting for design programs elsewhere at Cornell. In this case in CHE.

It feels like design faculty in CHE have been terribly overlooked in planning for their college and for inter-college activities recently. A big extra dose of sensitivity to their success is in order.

I hope the leadership of CHE HCD and of the proposed D&T can work out the challenges in a way that elevates both programs. I believe that is possible since the program are complementary and can be presented as distinct and equal.

Thomas Björkman, Horticulture