Student Experience

Winners, Jurors and Organizers of the 2026 Shawcroft Reception

May 26, 2026

Shawcroft Competition Honors 31 Years of Hand Drawing

In an era when design tools have gone almost entirely digital, one annual competition at NC State's College of Design insists on a different discipline — the kind that begins with a pencil, a pen, or a brush held in a human hand. The Brian Shawcroft Drawing Competition, now in its 31st year, remains a rare and deliberate celebration of hand drawing as a core architectural skill. This year, four students received prizes for submissions evaluated across three categories: the design process, documentation and analysis, and presentation. The breadth of those categories reflects the competition's central belief that hand drawing is not a single technique but a spectrum of thinking made visible.

database visualization detail for Cretaceous Creatures Project

May 11, 2026

Unearthing New Possibilities: Turning Science Data Into Engaging Design

A new collaboration between NC State’s College of Design and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences is granting students the opportunity to take their design skills to the next level. Students in the Design Studies program are focused on taking a complicated scientific database and turning it into an engaging and easy to understand experience for a wider audience.

Peak on the Mount, Raleigh, NC by Cameron Johnson

Apr 1, 2026

Architecture Students Named to Metropolis Future100

College of Design Students Lira Gomes and Cameron Johnson have been selected for the prestigious Metropolis Future100 program, which recognizes outstanding students for their contributions to architecture. The class of 2026 comprises 100 exceptional young designers across the United States and Canada whose portfolios demonstrate a shared dedication to purposeful design.

Apr 1, 2026

Tickets on sale for Art2Wear 2026

If you’re looking for a front-row seat for a new type of Art2Wear experience, you’re in luck – tickets for the College of Design’s wearable art event are now on sale. Three showings will be offered: April 23: 7-9 pm, April 24: 4-6 pm and April 24: 7-9 pm at the Gregg Museum of Art…

Mar 17, 2026

Discover Our Majors: Design Studies

Meet design studies student Lia Han, and learn how her interdisciplinary design major is preparing her to pursue a career in social media marketing.

Mar 16, 2026

Student Spotlight: Meet Gracie Wood, Connecting Sustainability with Design

Gracie Wood is from Cary, NC, and is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Design Studies with a minor in Psychology. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, backpacking and singing a cappella. Wood sat down with CaSA to share her experience as a member of the 2025 Sustainable Futures Fellows program. What was your…

Mar 16, 2026

Green Unseen: Trashy Furniture in the Floating Grove

Tucked between Biltmore Hall and Jordan Hall sits one of the most sustainable structures on campus. From the infrastructure to the furniture, the Floating Grove has layers of sustainable design—and one of those layers is made from material recycled from NC State’s campus. In this installment of CaSA’s Green Unseen series, we’re diving into what…

Mar 5, 2026

Emeritus Professor Austin Lowrey Passes Away at 93

Emeritus Professor Austin Lowrey passed away on February 20, 2026. Austin was hired by the College of Design to develop “visual design” offerings in the Bachelor of Product Design program in the 1970s and continued as a pivotal member of the graphic design faculty from the department’s inception in 1991 until his retirement in 1999.

Design Den T-Shirt Design winner Sutherland Webster

Mar 3, 2026

Winning Tee and Design Den Pick Crowned in T-Shirt Design Contest

For a contest built on creativity, this year the Spring Student T-Shirt Design Contest introduced an exciting twist with a Design Den Pick winner being…

Group of architecture students posing together in the Brooks Hall Lobby.

Feb 25, 2026

2026 AIA Triangle Scholarship Winners Announced

This year’s American Institute of Architects Triangle (AIAT) Scholarship recipients tackled social, environmental, historical and spatial contexts head-on. From Southeast Raleigh to Lake Crabtree, from diagrammatic analysis to mixed-use urban revival, these student designers asked difficult questions about who architecture serves and how it shows up in the world.

Jan 15, 2026

The Floating Grove: Inside NC State’s First Mass Timber Pavilion

Built in just eleven weeks, Floating Grove is NC State’s first mass timber pavilion designed and constructed by architecture students through the School of Architecture’s Design + Build program. From chainsaw-built jigs to cross-laminated timber experimentation, the project showcases how hands-on learning, collaboration and sustainable materials come together to create a space that now belongs to the campus community.

Nov 27, 2025

Meet Harrison Kaufmann

Introducing Harrison, a graduate student in the Master of Architecture program at NC State, and a two-time study abroad participant! With a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Harrison returned to NC State to pursue his passion for architecture. In the Fall of 2024, he joined NC State Prague, where he explored his interests in urban design, sustainability, and international architecture. His study abroad experiences in both Adelaide, Australia, and Prague, Czech Republic, have provided him with unique opportunities to engage with diverse architectural practices and broaden his global perspective.

Nov 10, 2025

Rooted at NC State: Red Dot Design Award Winner Showcases Research-Design-Industry Partnership

What began as a classroom challenge to improve care for mothers and newborns has grown into an award-winning medical device. After studying how hospital design made it difficult for mothers recovering from cesarean birth to reach their infants, NC State industrial design students collaborated with UNC researchers and design firm Trig to create the Couplet Care Bassinet. Now used in hospitals across the U.S., the bassinet allows new mothers to safely connect with their babies — a powerful example of design improving everyday lives.

Architecture student Hannah Wright holds a project model from class at her studio desk.

Oct 23, 2025

Bridging Spaces, People and Experiences: Q&A with Hannah Wright

Hannah Wright is a third-year architecture student at the College of Design. In 2023, Wright transferred to NC State from Northern Virginia Community College and shared her story with us as part of Transfer Student Appreciation Week.

Student Kai Kuwata turning a block of wood on a lathe in the materials lab at NC State's College of Design.

Oct 13, 2025

A Gift in Oak: Crafting Design, from Raleigh to Nagoya

Industrial design student Kai Kuwata honors 40 years of partnership between NC State and Nagoya University with a handcrafted oak bowl that symbolizes creativity, collaboration and design thinking.

Aug 12, 2025

Virtual Production Studio Relies on Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design announced that Raleigh-based NC State's Virtual Production Lab utilizes Blackmagic Design Products to help students experience a diverse range of applications, including filmmaking, AR/VR, concept development and live events.

Filming for NC State's eSports tournament taking place in the Virtual Production Lab

Jul 16, 2025

Designed to Play: The College of Design Makes Its Mark on Esports at NC State

NC State University’s esports program partnered with the College of Design to produce promotional content for the 2025 College League of Legends and Valorant Championship Grand Finals. Using virtual production technology, students created high-impact visuals that reflect the growing role of design and media in collegiate esports.

Jabria Oliver shares the focus of her research as a Master of Industrial Design student: a lack of menstrual hygiene for unhoused populations, a human-centered approach to a design problem.

Jun 10, 2025

Designing Dignity: Jabria Oliver’s Fight Against Period Poverty

Period poverty, defined as the lack of access to menstrual hygiene products, safe facilities and adequate education, is a global issue affecting millions of people. For women experiencing homelessness, this often-overlooked challenge exacerbates an already precarious situation, forcing them to make impossible choices between basic needs. In an industry crowded with consumer electronics, automobiles and medical devices, Jabria Oliver, a recent graduate of the Master of Industrial Design program, is working to create a prominent space designing for social impact.

Maraffi instructs students on how to use the motion capture suit in front of the LED wall of the Virtual Production Lab.

Jun 10, 2025

At the Forefront: Making a Place in Virtual Production

A giant talking octopus in a lab nestled in the South American jungle. Actors and Hollywood filmmakers working to complete a Sci-Fi short over just four days. Off screen, technicians, camera operators and support staff create the immersive world displayed on the giant LED wall, using 3D printed props, Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and generative AI. This is just another day in the Virtual Production Lab, where students and educators innovate and learn within this burgeoning field.

Students visited Espacio Escultórico, which means "sculptural space," a UNESCO World Heritage site made from volcanic rock at UNAM.

Jun 10, 2025

Global Perspectives in Design: How NC State’s Duda Program Shapes Design Students

Partnering with renowned Mexican architect Gabriela Carrillo, architecture and landscape architecture students explored the urban and environmental complexities of a metropolis rich in Indigenous history and modern challenges as part of this year’s Duda Visiting Designer Program.

A student photographs the projection of the earth for use in their studio project.

Jun 10, 2025

Bringing Visualization to Education: Designing an Out-of-This-World Museum Experience

Olga Njai, a student in the Master of Graphic & Experience Design program, is an experienced graphic designer. But her first studio in the program presented a challenge unlike any other she’d taken on before. The instructor, Associate Professor Deborah Littlejohn, tasked Njai and her classmates with creating a visual data story on the topic of their choice for the Durham Museum of Life and Science using NOAA's Science on A Sphere display.

Students from NC State Architecture Design + Build

Jun 10, 2025

Mindful Design: Students Create Shade Structures for Raleigh Skate Park

For architecture students in the Design + Build program, completing four shade structures for the Conlon Family Skatepark in just eleven weeks was a triumph. The second crowning achievement: spray-painted tags appeared soon after the artfully perforated, white panels were hoisted up and secured. For the team of four instructors and 15 students, it meant they had ensured that the design connected culturally with the intended community — a principle that lies at the heart of Design + Build.

mockups for the 2025 issue of designlife magazine

Jun 10, 2025

Embracing a New Look: Designlife Magazine Visualizes the Art of Making

This year, the Designlife magazine has a bold new look, envisioned by a group of students in the graphic & experience design program. Working with faculty advisor Jarrett Fuller, the students conceptualized and helped execute a creative refresh of the magazine in just

May 30, 2025

A Look Back at Art2Wear: Revive

In Art2Wear: Revive, students broke tradition and rebuilt something unforgettable. Through immersive design, mythic themes and a touch of plastic, the show redefined what wearable art can be.

May 9, 2025

Congratulations, Spring 2025 Graduates!

The College of Design is proud to celebrate the graduates of the spring 2025 class.

Graphic & experience design students at their project presentations for SAS

Apr 30, 2025

NC State students use AI to help businesses work smarter, faster and friendlier

NC State College of Design students were tasked with creating an original B2B application incorporating generative AI to satisfy business and user needs. Using SAS’ tech stack for generative AI, students were asked to understand the data collection and output of generative AI.

Apr 14, 2025

Thinking with the box: Maestro’s Theatre delivers a new experience for arcade gameplay

A marionette character controlled by ragdoll gameplay. A rotating game screen embracing the look and feel of vintage theater. Limited computer graphics and limited time. All of these came together via a student team with limitless creativity and a desire to problem-solve to create Maestro’s Theatre, an arcade game developed by MADTech students and displayed at Super Magfest.

Mar 13, 2025

Two Graphic Design Students Featured on GDUSA’s Students to Watch List

Two students from the college's graphic and experience design program are making their mark on the industry. Megan Mersch is blending artistry with human-centered design to craft seamless digital experiences, while Rebecca Planchart is shaping the future of UX and AI, using design to bridge gaps in public health, government, and emerging technology. Meet GDUSA’s Students to Watch and see how they’re redefining what design can do.

Mar 13, 2025

Art2Wear pop-up gallery and live event at the Gregg Museum

This article was written by Kelsey Bohn and originally appeared in the Technician. See the original. The Gregg Museum of Art and Design opened a new Pop-Up Gallery Lounge entitled “Art2Wear: Through the Archives” Tuesday. The exhibition is in partnership with NC State’s Art2Wear club, which hosts an annual student-led showcase that displays a variety of innovative,…

Feb 17, 2025

College of Design Signs MOU with National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

The College of Design at NC State University has signed an MOU with the Faculty of Architecture of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma De México (UNAM) to promote academic and research activities between the two institutions and further affirm the value of international collaboration. Collaborations with UNAM will allow the college to extend its involvement in global issues related to urbanization and the environment and translate that knowledge into teaching and practice through the lens of a global framework.

Roooted: the Embrace of Earth + Water Maggie Kroening - North Carolina State University

Jan 15, 2025

School of Architecture Students and Faculty Win Statewide Awards for Design

Eight student teams were recognized at the American Institute of Architects North Carolina Design and Chapter Awards. The School of Architecture was also recognized for teaching excellence through its Educator of the Year, Kamphoefner Prize, F. Carter Williams Gold Medal and Associate Award.

Jan 7, 2025

NC State Creatives: Tatiana Veloso

To Tatiana Veloso, design has a powerful ability to connect individuals to each other and to the places they inhabit. A 2024 graduate of the Master of Landscape Architecture program, her work bridges the gap between art, science, and community engagement.

Nov 25, 2024

Doctoral Students Showcase Work through Design Probes: Research Strands

On November 21, the College of Design's doctoral programs brought together practitioners from the Doctor of Design and PhD in Design programs to showcase their outstanding research in a poster session and review titled "Design Probes: Research Strands." Students bridge academia and practice across diverse design fields, and the event showcased the collaborative ecosystem that spans the college's four departments and fosters a vibrant environment for interdisciplinary perspectives.

Nov 22, 2024

NC State Creatives: Lauren Miller

Lauren Miller, a recent graduate of NC State's College of Design, is an award-winning animator and storyteller. Her animated short Touch won 'Best of the Fest' at the Queer Expressions Film Festival. With a passion for human-centered design and uplifting underrepresented communities, Lauren creates work that resonates with diverse audiences.

Farmer Cee Stanley tossing hay from the back of a pickup truck.

Nov 12, 2024

Cultivating Design Solutions with Green Heffa Farms

In the spring of 2024, PhD student and instructor Erin White brought students from his D101 Design Thinking course to solve multiple challenges faced at Green Heffa Farms. The students, many of whom are not design majors, addressed challenges such as storage issues, workflow efficiency and social media strategy.

Student ASLA award winning project long marsh forward

Sep 17, 2024

Landscape Architecture Students Win National Awards for Fourth Year in a Row

The Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental planning is thrilled to share that student teams won national ASLA awards for the fourth year in a row. Since 2020, student teams in the Master of Landscape Architecture program have won 12 awards nationally.

Sep 10, 2024

Sight Unseen, Students Design UX for Intelligence Analysts

A Fictitious Terrorist Attack “In 2019 a bombing killed two people and injured others in the city of Macondo, a mountain town in Oceania. A commercially made drone fitted with…

Samantha Krumbhaar's Paper Streets Projects utilizes tunnels made from natural materials to reference Hayti culture.

Aug 20, 2024

Bringing New Life to Paper Streets

The City of Durham has over 600 “paper streets” - narrow strips of land planned for use as a street, but never built. College of Design students partnered with the city’s Office of Performance and Innovation to bring new life to these previously underutilized spaces, envisioning micro-parks, art installations, educational outdoor spaces, and valuable pedestrian corridors.

Thumbnail preview for Marc Russo's on the run animation

Aug 15, 2024

“A remix of Pink Floyd, 2001 Space Odyssey and Akira” – Faculty member enters Pink Floyd animation competition

Marc Russo can distinctly remember one of his first introductions to Pink Floyd. He was sitting on the front steps of his friend’s house in 1980, listening to “The Wall”, and he was 11 years old. “It was like a battle cry,” he says. “I didn’t understand much more of the album, but I was connected to this song.” 44 years after that first encounter, Russo, alumnus and associate professor of media arts, design and technology, is connecting his love of Pink Floyd with his professional work in a different way - designing an animation as entry for a contest hosted by the band to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their release of “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Jul 15, 2024

Designing a Path Through Mental Health: Wellness in the First Year Experience

Following several major grants awarded to the College of Design by the NC State University Foundation, the First Year Experience has blossomed into a program that integrates wellness and mental health awareness into an interdisciplinary design curriculum. The College of Design is a very close-knit community, and most of the first year involves practicing intellectual risk-taking through studio-based learning. The wellness-informed curriculum was created because the freshman experience in design bridges the vast threshold or transition between high school and college where students are expected to routinely fail and subsequently grow through trial and error.

NC Historic Resilience Primer. Photo courtesy of Coastal Dynamics Design Lab.

Jun 18, 2024

College of Design Students and Faculty Win Awards at NCASLA

Students, faculty and alumni attended the NCASLA Conference in Asheville, receiving multiple awards and presenting to professionals from across the state. The Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning sponsored fourteen Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) students in the College of Design to attend the event.

The 2024 Student Art Sale, photo credit: Kyle Lewis

Jun 5, 2024

Student Art Sale Soars to New Heights; Largest Sale To Date

The 2024 Student Art Sale featured work from over 75 artists across 11 colleges at NC State, granting student artists of all disciplines an opportunity to be represented and share their art. The 2024 Visual Artist Winners are Sean Evans, a second year majoring in graphic and experience design, with the piece “Platinum” for the 2D category, Erin Emott, a graduate student in plant biology, with the piece “Skelly” for the 3D category and Jack E. McKissock, a first year in media arts and technology, with the piece “Sahbabii” for the digital category.

Aurora Henderson's collection, Psilocybin, brings human anatomy to life in oversized forms.

Apr 30, 2024

Be Transported to the Wild and Wacky Dimensions of Art2Wear 2024

On a balmy spring evening, in a packed house at Stewart Theater, students from the College of Design and across the university paraded their collections as part of Art2Wear 2024, pulling the audience into another dimension. With each collection, designers led us into their own worlds, from the depths of the ocean to wind-swept dunes, even traveling into outer space. The eight designers who showcased collections of four or more looks came from disciplines across the college, and their fields of study influenced their final looks.

Group photo where everyone shouts "Let's go play!" at the new Governor Morehead School Outdoor Accessibility Center.

Apr 25, 2024

Freedom by Design Celebrates with Custom-Designed Outdoor Learning Center

Students of the Governor Morehead School (GMS) celebrated the redesign of their new Outdoor Learning Center surrounded by community members, builders and NC State students who contributed to the project’s design and much of the labor, both in the shop and on the site.

Apr 19, 2024

NC State Creatives: Ashtyn Thomas

To first-year architecture student Ashtyn Thomas, design represents possibility and opportunity. In addition to celebrating her Lumbee identity and community, she is using her passion to design spaces that provide economic stability, cultural enrichment and resilience for indigenous communities throughout North Carolina.

Apr 11, 2024

Unity Through Design: Q&A with Melissa Manjarrez Dominguez

Raised in the heart of a community ravaged by cartel fighting, Melissa Manjarrez Dominguez witnessed firsthand the spread of violence and fear. Yet, amid the chaos, she also observed something remarkable – the power of certain spaces to bring people together, offering respite from the turmoil and fostering unity.

Teaser image for The Student Publication, vol. 40

Mar 27, 2024

Artificial Apotheosis: The Student Publication, Volume 40

This year’s Student Publication, volume 40, explores the intersection of design and spirituality. Editor Steven Nohren dove headfirst into editing the publication as a design studies student, returning full-time after taking a sabbatical during the pandemic. Now, he’s attending talks on AI and approaching professionals to contribute to one of the college’s oldest print media.

Mar 8, 2024

Two Graphic Design Students Featured in GDUSA’s Students to Watch

Graphic Design students Erin Secosky and Bhavana Veeravalli were recently featured as part of GDUSA’s 2024 “Students to Watch” list.

“South Durham Food Cooperative,” collage. The Morehead Hill and the Black Hayti communities in southern Durham have been historically divided by inequitable practices of displacement, exclusion, and segregation. This material culture collage explores the layered relationships between the site’s natural environment, systematic and unjust building practices through time, and the disproportionate burdens on the historically disinvested Black community. While the demographics of these neighborhoods have largely evolved and are ever-changing, the lingering effects of these divisive layers and physical barriers perpetuate the segregation of the two communities that share boundaries with the site. © Noelle Robinson.

Feb 27, 2024

Noelle Robinson Wins Robert. L. Wesley Award

School of Architecture student Noelle Robinson was one of five students to win the 2024 SOM Foundation's Robert L. Wesley Award. With her win, Noelle will receive a $10,000 award in addition to a yearlong mentorship program that connects the students with leading BIPOC practitioners and educators.

Jan 26, 2024

MLA Student Shabnam Mohammadzadeh Receives Dean’s Wings on Wings Award

As part of the fall 2023 commencement ceremony, Dean Mark Hoversten recognized an exceptional student for their performance in the classroom and service to the college with the Dean’s Award for Outstanding College Citizenship and Academic Excellence, known as the Wings on Wings award.