Untitled Document
TU/e Starts New International Industrial
Design Department
TU/e is in the process of founding a complete new internationally
oriented department of Industrial Design. The new course will
start in September of next year and will be the first course to
be given in English from day one of its Bachelor program. A team
of educators is working on a comprehensive program meant to put
TU/e engineers on the map in this field.
Prof.dr.ir. Jeu Schouten has been appointed chairman of the new
department. The other two members of the founding departmental
board are ir. Han Smits (curriculum manager) and prof.dir.ir.
Lou Feijs.
"The Industrial Design market is international. We need
to make sure our graduates are geared for that. In this we differ
in our starting point from other courses" says Schouten.
"It's also my personal opinion that students who don't spend
time abroad are not getting everything they can from their studies."
The fourth year of the Industrial Design course will be a year
for students to spend abroad to gain international research experience
with foreign universities or companies.
Industrial Design will start with about one hundred students in
September 2001. ID is planning to start recruiting from schools
in the Netherlands and Belgium during this academic year. Students
from other countries are also welcome, but will not yet be actively
recruited.
New Staff
The new department will need ten full time professors, or their
equivalent in part-timers. "We already have many suitable
people at TU/e, but they already have jobs and may not want to
increase their load. So we will certainly have to hire new staff,"
says Han Smits. "We also expect to recruit quite a few new
staff members abroad. These visiting professors could conceivably
spend, say, two months a year in the Netherlands teaching. We
are already talking to people from M.I.T., the Imperial College
in London and the universities in Milan and Singapore about taking
on teaching posts and about possible student exchange and research
traineeships."
The course will consist of basic training and subsequent specialisation
in four areas in the third year, namely Product Design, Embedded
Systems Design, Interaction Design and Systems Specification and
Evaluation. In the Masters phase, students will work on an integrative
final project.
"Our Industrial Design program will have a clear technological
content," says Schouten. "Our main focus is not styling.
However, styling will be an important element in the course, for
which we will probably be seeking teaching staff abroad. At the
moment, TU/e does not yet have much expertise in this area, apart
from our co-operation with the Academy of Industrial Design in
Eindhoven."
Another difference with existing courses at TU/e is Schouten and
Smits' expectation that it will attract both male and female students
and that the ratio should be about 50/50. "We expect this
to be a very popular course from the very beginning," says
Smits.
Broad international recruiting will begin with the Masters program
in three years time. There is already co-operation in place with
the National University of Singapore.
Eindhoven dialect
Schouten and Smits do not anticipate any real problems with Dutch
students and teachers having to operate in English. "Most
of the terms and text books in this field are in English. Rapid
prototyping, concurrent engineering, to name a few terms. This
is not a subject that you can translate into Eindhoven dialect,"
jokes Smits.
However, it is conceivable that a subject like calculus might
be taught in Dutch during the first few years of the program,
in classes with Dutch speaking students and Dutch lecturers. This
will rapidly change as foreign students and lecturers are recruited.
The department expects people will (have to) learn as they go./.
The English page in Cursor is written bij Paula van de Riet.
She can be reached at extension 4441. Email: www.engcur@stud.tue.nl
