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WEC Units: Design, Housing, and Apparel (DHA)


One of three departments comprising the newly established College of Design, DHA has five undergraduate programs and enrolls approximately 700 undergraduate majors. Three of the programs are studio-based (Clothing/Apparel Design, Graphic Design, and Interior Design), and two programs are not (Housing Studies and Retail Merchandising). DHA’s 20–25 faculty members expand traditional notions of writing by adding visual image presentations, and by maintaining communication, via the department’s active outreach program, with the citizens of Minnesota.

Writing Plan

Highlights:
Creation Phase (Fall 2007)
DHA faculty came to understand that its faculty hold some harmonious and some unique expectations for student writing. To tease these out, the WEC Team met individually with each program’s faculty. These meetings revealed similarities: faculty from four of the five programs expected students to learn to write with what they referred to as “the professional ‘I,’” whether they were writing as designers or as analysts. Differences between the programs also emerged. The process revealed, for example, that whereas writing in Housing Studies “works critically, analytically, and synthetically with ideas,” writing in Graphic Design “is active, imaginative, and oriented toward discovery.”

Center for Writing   10 Nicholson Hall    216 Pillsbury Dr. SE, Minneapolis,   MN 55455    Phone: 612-625-0791   Fax: 612-626-7580