Find out what it means to live a life of design by exploring our website.
Your visit to this website is a first step in crafting your education and career. That education and career will have a big impact on your life. It will shape how you think, who you meet, how you spend your time, where you live. It will be deeply rewarding and equally challenging. It will require the best you have to offer and enrich your life and the lives of those you serve.
The college is here to help you begin your journey in the design life. Our highly ranked programs not only teach professional excellence, but also help you learn important life skills, such as teamwork, collaboration, creative inquiry, crafting and making, and research. In short, you will learn to balance intuition with evidence as you design solutions to the confounding challenges we face.
No matter what degree program you choose, our faculty and staff are here to support you and provide a safe place for you to experiment, learn from mistakes, and begin your life in design.
So once again, welcome and here’s to great design!
Mark Elison Hoversten, PhD, FASLA, FCELA, AICP, Assoc. AIA
Our Strategic Plan
The College of Design educates students to become innovators and thought leaders while creating a community for designers, researchers, scholars and practitioners. Our vision is to pursue excellence in design education, scholarship and engagement to empower a more just, healthy, resilient, flourishing and sustainable future.
Meet Rheanna Murray, a talented Graphic and Experience Design senior from Boxford, Massachusetts, who spent her spring semester in her junior year in Prague. Rheanna’s passion for design and eagerness to study abroad to keep up with the family tradition has taken her to Prague for her whole semester, where she studied European Design History, Illustration, and Graphic Design studio. Fun fact – Rheanna also designed @ncstateprague`s super cute stickers that encapsulate her unique humor and make her study abroad experience unforgettable. Rheanna’s spotlight shines with brilliant insights and invaluable tips on how to make the most of your study abroad experience. Read her Q&A in our bio!