Design + Equity Seminar: Year 2

Elizabeth Ortega’s Personal Positionality project artifact + slide.

“Design is leadership. Lead by Design.” 

Bruce Mau

We’re spotlighting our Design and Equity seminar class. This year, it is taught by Kareem Collie, a design professional and educator, as well as the Head of Design at NASA JPL. Kareem used to work at the Hive, helping us launch various initiatives, and has had a successful career working at IBM, Nickelodeon, Coca-Cola, and teaching design at the Pratt Institute and Stanford University’s d.school. 

The unique seminar format brings together students who are passionate and curious about the intersection of design and social equity. Initially prototyped as a group independent study, this course emerged from student requests for an opportunity to delve deeper into how design can be a more inclusive and equitable practice, and now serves as a full-credit option open to students across the 7Cs.  

With an experimental curriculum built around collaborative exploration, students engage with diverse media (readings, audio content, news articles, videos, etc.)  through interactive modules, frameworks, creative making, and play, with Kareem’s added element of Mindful Leadership. Guest facilitators, including Linett Luna Tovar, Lesley-Ann Noel, Elaine Young, and Christian Howard, will lead several classes, bringing their expertise and experience to the subject matter. This year’s syllabus divides the course into three segments: Personal Positionality, Language of Design, and Design + Equity in Action.

So far, students have completed their first project within the Personal Positionality section, where they were asked to create a physical or conceptual object that conveys their positionality: how their identity, experiences, and perspective shape their perception of and engagement with the world. From their project presentations, the student Emmy Knapp shared, “If you don’t define yourself, others will do it for you. Exploring positionality is a form of empowerment, not embarrassment. Every single piece of my identity interacts with all parts of myself.” 

In the coming months, students will design an artifact that conveys the frameworks and tools they find meaningful in examining design and equity, as well as design an object, tool, or framework that communicates their perspective on an equity challenge in a field of their choice.

By Salina Muñoz