 I started my first full-time teaching gig at Judson University about five years ago. Judson University is a conservative Christian college, and it is a unique place for a design school. The students are caring and hardworking, and most of them grew up in a strong religious culture. In fact, 70% of the student body was previously homeschooled, which is a staggering number. So for many of them, their opinions are largely based on the influence of their parents or their church. College is generally a time where young adults explore different perspectives and beliefs and spread their wings a bit. At Judson, though, there isn't a great diversity of thought for the students to venture through. The culture promotes certain opinions and beliefs. Most of the students haven't been encouraged to question what they have been taught, and in turn have a difficult time forming their own unique perspectives and opinions. Now, in religious studies, this may not be a huge issue, but in design, we are tasked with being able to reach the depths of the human experience, with questioning the status quo and looking beyond how things have always been done. We need to be confident enough to disagree and brave enough to suggest an alternative. This singular perspective was very evident in the student-senior thesis projects. Every single student made up a fictional company or organization and designed the branding and products. Many of the projects were technically quite good, but none were very interesting. None were presented with passion or conviction. When I came on full-time, I was tasked with taking over the senior proposal and project classes. I wanted to rework the curriculum to encourage the students to tap into their own perspective and opinions. I wanted to empower them to create culture, not just mimic it. During their senior year, our students have two classes devoted to their thesis project. In the fall semester, they develop a concept and proposal, and in the spring, they actualize their proposal into a project. This process probably sounds familiar because it's like every other senior design project process class ever. And it definitely sounded familiar to me at the time, having just completed my grad school thesis project. Because the process was so fresh, I was able to vividly remember how it felt to try to pick something to research and ultimately design some sort of project for. It was daunting. The pressure is immense to pick something you are going to devote the next year or more to. I wanted to think of a way to guide the students on an intuitive journey to finding a topic they were personally passionate about without all the pressure. I wanted to start the curriculum planning process with very specific goals and learning outcomes. To touch someone's heart with design, to push the design process in their work, to explore unexpected paths, to connect personally with their work, to hear criticism and effectively enact it, to write, to explore, expand and learn, to analyze and distill personal writings, to learn research and exploratory techniques, to develop a soundly researched concept for a senior thesis design project. So from this list of goals, I developed a step-by-step journey of self-exploration, writing prompts, many projects and research. As a jumping off point, we looked at this quote from Saphon Sagmeister. So much of what designers do is technically very good. But it leaves people cold and has little meaning in their lives. The question came out of a frustration of drowning in professionally designed things that nobody gives a shit about, neither the maker nor the receiver. The main reason for all of this stuff is that most designers don't believe in anything. When your conscious is so flexible, how can you do strong design? He shares his frustration with design work that doesn't have a soul. He believes that the main reason for this is that most designers don't believe in anything. But I know that most of my students believe in a lot of things. Most of them are at that school because they have something they believe in. They're compassionate, loving people who needed to be pushed to learn how to find their voice. I split the proposal course into two parts, personal inquiry and design inquiry, first honing into their personal voice and then using a topic they care about to dive deeply into the research and thesis development. Over the course of the first few weeks, we engaged in a series of writing exercises and exploratory mini projects to find out. These helped the students hone their interests into a topic to explore further for their senior thesis projects. The assignments were presented one at a time so they weren't aware of the next step while they were completing the current one. I told them explicitly to avoid thinking about any one of the steps in terms of what a project next semester could be. They needed to trust that there was a plan, though I didn't let them know exactly what it was. We start week one by asking what can design can do. Can design do more than sell products for clients? Can design move someone enough to change the course of events? Can design play a bigger role in solving societal problems? They were then tasked to write a personal design manifesto or belief statement. The goal was to get them thinking about the potential of design and their take on it. In week two, they were tasked with their first mini project. It was inspired by Segmeister's class at SVA called Touch Someone's Heart with Design. They were to pick a person and use design to touch their heart within a limited amount of time. They had one week. So one student made a poster for her little brother who was feeling a bit self-conscious about his new haircut. Another student made appreciation cards and wrote little things she appreciated about her resident advisor and put them in places around campus that she would find. These were quick low-risk projects, not allowing them to be paralyzed by fear. With such quick turnaround times, the students had to pick an idea and then go with it. Week three's task was to touch a community with design. One student made a book for friends of those suffering from depression with advice on how to love well. And another student sought to facilitate more authentic community building at the school by leaving question cards at tables in the cafeteria. In weeks four through six, we shift gears towards introspection. I asked them to dig deep within themselves to discover what it is they believe in, what is most important to them, what makes them who they are, and we engaged in a series of writing exercises to find out. The previous week's exercises were designed to open up the scope of possibilities. And here is where students started to dig into their personal interests and reflect on topics that they might want to further explore. I asked them to free write and then distill for each of these assignments. For week four, they took time to think about what was important to them. Objects, topics, issues, activities, et cetera, and make a list of 10 of these things. From the list of 10, they were then to narrow the list down to three to five and develop written features on them. A feature would explain the what, where, why, et cetera about each topic. It was really interesting to see what students were interested in. There were the more likely things like the environment or music, but I also had some more unique interests like hair or water and one student just said rocks. From those features, they were to narrow down again to two to three ideas and write a creative essay about each from a different angle. They were to identify a subject or object within each of their topics and write an essay from that perspective. If they were interested in the slow food movement, they might write an essay from the perspective of a wooden spoon. Or one student who was interested in the significance of hair and black culture wrote a story told by the perspective of a comb. This exercise began to reveal the motives behind their interests. By this point, most of the students favored one or two of the topics they had been working on. So to get them more invested in whichever one they wanted to continue with, they were to identify what they already knew. They made lists of word associations or feelings they have about the topic. They forced connections between lists to recognize the perspectives they bring to the table and to again look at the topics in new ways. This step also revealed some biases they held and allowed them to recognize where they might need to be more objective. Without realizing it, they are performing the first stages of design research, discovering new perspectives, realizing what theirs was and identifying their biases. But the next steps required them to jump from looking inwardly to looking externally. For the next four weeks, students were to engage in active research on their topics. Part of proposing something is really understanding it and then having an opinion about it. It's that second part that my students in particular have a typical time with. Their opinions have been mostly someone else's pass down without much thought or consideration. Each student conducted qualitative and quantitative research, going to the library, reading articles, creating surveys and conducting interviews. They learned new things and then reported to the class and everyone worked together to help give each other direction for their continued research. Class time became a time of show and tell and discussion. And many times this discussion led to revelations a student wouldn't have had on their own. Navigating new ideas, especially ones that might challenge someone's long held perspective was a delicate situation. I found myself playing the role of mediator and counselor. And it is now a running joke amongst the students to call this class group therapy. From their research they developed multi-dimensional thesis statements forming an opinion, taking a stance on their topic. Starting with a primary statement which is the motivation through the secondary tertiary supporting and concluding statements. So for example, using the topic of black hair, Alicia, one of the students wrote this statement to guide her research. Acceptance of natural beauty is an important part of how we perceive ourselves. A better perception of ourselves brings on the feelings of self-worth and value. Western white culture sees beauty as a pale complexion, fine facial features, and straight light colored hair. This is misleading, a misleading distorted view to people who don't fit into their definition of beauty and make specifically black people try to assimilate to something they weren't created to be. Through embracing natural hair this will bring black people to love something unique about themselves that is always being altered to fit in. So Alicia then used this thesis statement to guide her research. So in a lot of classes, projects students are given a creative brief in the form of an assignment sheet. And then they use that to develop a concept that fulfills that brief. In this stage of the process there is no creative brief. They must develop their own criteria. So this was one of my favorite steps because it is where they start to develop actual project proposals without even realizing it. They begin to dream up solutions to the problems they are defining. As we've done along every step of the process the students present their briefs to the rest of the class. They discuss their ideas collectively and what kind of project they think would address the brief they developed. By the end of the week 12 they all have an idea to propose for the following semester. Having an idea is only as good as how well it can be presented. So for the next few weeks the students develop a presentation of their project proposal. They develop comprehensive outlines and we spend class time practicing and revising their presentations until finally the last week of class the students formally present their proposals to a panel of faculty and guests. I started using this curriculum in fall of 2015. So I've done this process three times now. With slight variations each year. It has been absolutely inspiring to see how much passion these students put into their projects. They dream big and weird and put in the hard work to make their crazy ideas a reality. They learned how to make processing and Arduino sketches to make their work interactive. They played with materials and in mediums completely foreign to them and they had fun. None of them would have said the process was easy but most would say where they ended was unexpected. Their final projects were not ideas they would have had otherwise going into their final year. They pushed themselves harder and further because they were working with topics they cared deeply about. Also there are three of the many passion projects that have come out of this course. So from our previous example Alicia is the student who was passionate about natural hair and black beauty. Exploring many forms of beauty through an open call she collected poetry by black women about their hair the good, the bad and the processed. Alicia then created imagery based on those writings. The artwork uses hair and hair products as a medium and then distorts and alters the appearance digitally. She utilized glitch in the digital process as a metaphor for pressure and black culture to alter and process natural hair to conform to a limited notion of beauty. Last year her posters were featured in the Art of Blackness exhibition in Chicago. Paulina is a student from the Dominican Republic which as an island is surrounded by water. But when she came to the Midwest for school she noticed the emotional impact not being around water had on her. She found herself running faucets to feel calm. She wanted to explore the visual characteristics of water that evoked emotion and instead of mimicking the effects of water she used water as a medium of distortion. She projected type into a tray of water suspended in the air and then used audio waves from different types of music to create various movements in the water and let the effects happen organically. She then created a secluded space in the gallery for visitors to be enveloped by the emotive qualities. And lastly is Christina. Christina was the student who put rocks on her list of 10 things that define her. And it turns out she was very passionate about her rock collection. Through the writing exercises we learned a little bit more about why rocks are significant to her. Christina grew up in the Himalayas and had traveled quite a bit in her life. Since she was a little girl she would pick up a rock and wherever she went from wherever she went as a totem. To most people these were just rocks but she wanted to develop a way for others to interact with her collection and experience their sentimental richness. She chose six rocks and made abstract videos that captured the essence of their associated memories. The videos were projected into a security mirror to spread the content over the entirety of a little room she created. After entering the room visitors were encouraged to pick up rocks associated with Christina's memories. They could then place a rock on a pedestal and the room would fill with a sensory experience of recollecting that memory. She created this by hacking a kitchen scale to work with Arduino so that the weight of each rock triggered the corresponding clip. I couldn't be more proud of the faith my students put into their work in the process of getting there. Their growth not just as designers but as people was evident from beginning to end. They learned about themselves in order to find topics they cared about and the projects they developed showed that. Passion and care were infused in the final pieces inspiring them to keep instilling personal voice in their work long after they graduate. I wanted this course to be a time for them to find their voices, to reflect on how their opinions have been formed and to develop a greater sense of empathy. As design educators we are sending out the next generation of culture makers. It is my hope that in these classes students learn to be their authentic selves with a greater sense of responsibility to society and ultimately a passion for graphic design. So thank you.