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Master’s Degree in Design: a Multifaceted Curriculum
An overview of our postgraduate curriculum recently reorganized around 7 topic-oriented programs, each rooted in a major contemporary issue...
A Widely Acknowledged Degree
The five-year curriculum offered by L’École de design is based on the European model and the Bachelor’s-Master’s-PhD system and the ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) and leads to a state-approved degree certified by the Ministry of Higher Education.
Undergraduate students acquire professional skills thanks to a multifaceted training course rooted in the fundamental values of design. More international and oriented towards management and research, our postgraduate curriculum revolves around projects dealing with 7 contemporary society issues. All throughout their postgraduate curriculum students gain an expertise in one of these 7 topic-oriented programs while stepping into the business world by working in collaboration with industrial partners.
Strong links with the business world
Right from the first year of the postgraduate curriculum (i.e. their third year) students begin to tie links with business world thanks to a project-grounded course based on partnerships with industrial and institutional players. Then they further put their skills into practice via several internships as in-house trainee designers, including a 4 to 6-month final internship upon completion of which they are often hired as designers.
When defending their final degree project, fifth-year students are expected to prove their ability to deal with the many tasks required to carry out a project and their capacity to work with professionals from other fields while making use of methodological and creative skills in order to foster innovation.
Promoting Research
In our institution students are trained to become professionals and do not necessarily learn to conduct academic research per se. Our postgraduate curriculum has recently been reorganized and divided into a series of topic-oriented issues allowing students to choose an area of specialization: a way for our school to veer towards research by monitoring design trends as part of a series of prospective projects. Thanks to a wide range of partners (industrial partners, institutional partners, competitiveness clusters, partner schools’ research labs…) our school offers students the opportunity to use their specific designer know-how (product design, spatial design, interaction design and soon graphic design) to promote design-induced innovation.
L’École de design has signed an agreement with the University of Nantes to enable students willing to broaden their scope of studies towards management and company setup to study for a double degree during their final Master’s level year. Thus students can study towards a Master’s Degree in Business Management (Innovation and Entrepreneurship) while completing their Designer’s Degree.
In the near future we also aim to sign new agreements to propose new double degrees to spur students to enroll in post-graduate studies.
We already co-run a double-degree with Arts et Métiers ParisTech Angers-Laval (“Présence-Innovation” lab) thanks to which students in Virtual reality can attain a research-oriented Master of Science and Technology. More similar jointly run curriculums are to come.
For further information about our doule degree with Arts et Métiers ParisTech Angers-Laval, please visit their website.
For further information about our double degree with the University of Nantes, please visit the website of the Nantes Business Management Institute
International
We are striving to offer curriculums with an international scope. In their fourth year (first year of the postgraduate program) students are required to study abroad for a semester, an experience they will then be expected to bring to the fore during their final oral defense. This will to go global and spur our students to discover the world also gave rise to a new topic-oriented program taught in Qingdao, China (Cross-Cultural Design) whose participants will defend their final degree project in September 2010. Along the same line, our topic-oriented programs are open to foreign graduate students.
Budding Careers
We wish to congratulate the 34 students who defended their final degree project and their student path on September 10 in front of a jury composed of 2 designers, a professional from the business world and an institutional partner. In doing so they also explained their career perspectives and their commitment as designers. A second series of oral defenses will be held on November 5, 2009 to examine students enrolled in the double degree jointly run with the University of Nantes.
Jocelyne Le Bœuf, Director of Studies.
Further Reading:
Student Profile: C. Raitière - "Visual Designer"
Student Profile: A. Pasquier, Interaction Designer
