Do you believe that the world can be re-designed to be more equitable and just? MICA’s Master of Arts in Social Design, the first degree-bearing program of its kind, will help you:
Increase your social literacy — You’ll develop a deeper understanding of the issues of equity, power, race, and privilege that exist at the heart of the social problems we aim to address.
Deepen your design literacy — You’ll learn to establish ethical frameworks, as well as human-centered design methods, to build empathy with and engage people in your work.
Expand your professional pathways — You’ll join a network of alumni who are pioneering and innovative leaders in public, nonprofit, entrepreneurial, and academic fields.
Ideal candidates for the M.A. in Social Design come from diverse backgrounds and share a belief that design must play a role in advancing equity and social justice. If you are curious about interdisciplinary, collaborative approaches to civic engagement and social change, the program is a fit for you.
We value diversity in academic background. Social Design students have undergraduate and/or graduate degrees in a wide variety of design disciplines, and also in areas like anthropology, economics, fine arts, environmental studies, public health, and communications. We welcome students from any undergraduate major.
Professionally, our students range from those early in their careers to those working as physicians, industrial designers, data scientists, artists, writers, and teachers. The current cohort includes a service dog trainer and a DJ.
Some of our students come to the program with an interest in bringing a social design perspective to their existing area of expertise (such as law, journalism, medicine, and entrepreneurship). Others come to the program seeking to move into a design-centric field.
Students from the DC - Maryland - Virginia area typically represent half of the cohort, with the other half joining from across the United States and internationally.
In short, no matter your major or professional background, our M.A. in Social Design could be a great fit for you!
MICA’s M.A. in Social Design is a one-year, 30-credit program comprising seminar, studio, and elective courses as well as a variety of other immersive and practice-based experiences that take students outside of the institution to learn.
Examples Include:
Visiting Faculty — In addition to core faculty and staff, you’ll learn from visiting faculty across various disciplines and backgrounds.
Practice-based Studio — You’ll be eligible to enroll in semester-long courses that bring students from a variety of disciplines together with outside partners from government, nonprofit, and business sectors to learn and apply the human-centered design process.
Human-centered Design Intensive — You’ll learn and experience the human-centered design process in a multi-day, immersive project with a local partner facilitated by a leading practitioner in the field.
Capstone — You’ll undertake an immersive, design-driven project that focuses on a specific social problem and applies the methods, tools, and frameworks learned in the curriculum.
Practice-based Studios are credit-bearing, elective courses that bring students from MASD and a variety of other disciplines across MICA together with outside partners from government, nonprofit and business sectors to undertake a human-centered design process to address a concrete social problem.
