Graduate Design Education Workshops: A First Review

Over the past twelve months the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has sponsored a series of workshops on interdisciplinary graduate design education: what it is and how we do it. Our graduate students are our future researchers, teachers—and JMD authors. Colleagues from the Pennsylvania State University have led this effort, which has included a substantial number of design researchers and educators from engineering and beyond. There is a critical question about how engineers can relate and collaborate with their non-engineering colleagues, and an attendant one about how work crossing the engineering boundaries can be properly reported in a design journal like JMD. I have asked our colleagues to present some initial thoughts, to provoke some further thinking and engagement in the evolving discipline of design.