A designed banner of students and community partners working together. A woman in the image is holding up a sheet of paper showcasing the work.

Welcome to the Fall Semester 2023!

We warmly welcome back our rising 2nd year cohort and are so excited to welcome the new 1st years to the DSI community!

DSI is a graduate social design program asking:

How can design offer pathways that shift us towards healthy, equitable systems?
What conditions and collaborations enable communities, systems, and nature to thrive?
How can social design increase care and our capacity
for change?

Social design
works with communities, organizations, governments, businesses, and the planet through:

Strengthening Relationships + Care

Advocating for health, equity, anti-discrimination, justice, joy, and healing, Supporting shared values and interdependence, and honoring nature’s wisdom.
Design asks questions over solving problems, with care.

Intentionally
Co-Creating

Collaborating with communities, advocating for mutual benefit and abundance. Centering lived experience, while reducing harm.
Design can shift power, while building leadership and creatively responding.

Embracing Complexities

Breaking from things that no longer serve us. Recognizing the continuum and pluralities, and making the invisible visible.
Design supports new thinking over new things to imagine possibility and lead with vision.

DSI MFA Program

What We Teach

Curious about our curriculum?

The DSI curriculum is cross-disciplinary, systems-level, collaborative, and hands-on. Our coursework draws from within and outside the traditional design avenues to examine the complex systems that connect every major issue today.

Find out more about what you’ll learn here at DSI by checking out the new Fall 2023 curriculum below!

Learn More

Projects

MFA DSI Thesis Show 2023

Our fabulous fifteen students share their inspiring thesis projects.

New Faculty Announcement

New Faculty: Rhea Rakshit (DSI '15)

This year, Rhea Rakshit (MFA DSI ’15) will be joining us as a new Faculty member! Check out the link below to see where she’s been since she graduated from MFA DSI!

Designer in Residence

Introducing Fall 2023 Designer in Residence: Grey Area Collective

Grey Area Collective integrates art, activism, and technology to drive change and spark conversation. We are excited to welcome them to DSI as our Fall 2023 Designers in Residence! Learn more about their vision for this residency below!

MFA DSI Thesis 2023

MFA DSI Thesis 2023

Find Your Frequency

Brittany Nievinski

MFA DSI ’23 alum Brittany Nievinksi created Find Your Frequency for her thesis project in order to create more awareness and engagement with young folks and hearing health. Find Your Frequency is a series of gatherings to hold space for open conversations around hearing health with young people.

Follow the link below to learn more about the project!