Ready to Create Impact? | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Ready to Create Impact?

RIPPLES

Ready to create impact -- in sustainable design? We’re offering three sustainability-focused courses for the Fall, open to all.

If you’re considering joining our fully online MA in Sustainable Design program, this is a good chance to engage with us and see what it’s like to learn online. If not, it’s a wonderful way to learn more about sustainability!

Systems Thinking

Course Description
Systems thinking is relational thinking, and in this course, students examine how systemic relations underpin efforts to cultivate a more sustainable world. Students analyze patterns of identity, creativity, and change, and nurture capacities for anticipating, coordinating, and contextualizing. Drawing from a wide range of source materials, numerous voices will inform the research. Course assignments include both mapping exercises – investigating situational complexities through the use of models, frameworks, and matrices – and reflective practices – attending to experiences that manifest as one pursues these explorations.

This is a graduate level class and is part of MCAD's Master of Arts in Sustainable Design.

Class starts Mon, Aug 25, 2025-Fri, Dec 12, 2025

Fundamentals of Sustainable Design

Course Description
This foundational course introduces students to sustainability concepts related to business, community, communications, and innovation, as well as covering practical design-for-sustainability (D4S) concepts, strategies, tools and techniques. The universal design-for-sustainability approaches covered in the course are applicable for practicing designers of all disciplines, as well as innovators, marketers and entrepreneurs. Students learn and apply these concepts and strategies to self-directed design projects and exercises in addition to readings, research, lectures, and discussions.

This is a graduate level class and is part of MCAD's Master of Arts in Sustainable Design.

Class starts Mon, Aug 25, 2025-Fri, Dec 12, 2025

Inspiring Innovation & Implementation

Course Description
In this course, students find opportunities for innovation that can have a real impact and influence within an organization or community. Students connect organizational priorities with sustainability and inclusivity goals to inspire the development of their innovation ideas through prototyping. Students then design an implementation tool or experience that encourages interest and support for the implementation of the innovation.

This is a graduate level class and is part of MCAD's Master of Arts in Sustainable Design.

Class starts Mon, Aug 25, 2025-Fri, Dec 12, 2025

REGISTRATION IS OPEN!

While you're there, check out the (fully online) Sustainable Design courses we're offering this fall!

If you have questions about the MA in Sustainable Design program, please email me. Applications for Spring 2026 are due December 1.

Categories
Sustainable Design
Online Courses
About the MA Program
Published on
April 30, 2025

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Minneapolis, MN 55404

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Land Acknowledgement

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) acknowledges it is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. This is the ancestral homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, who were forcibly exiled from the land because of aggressive and persistent settler colonialism. We recognize that this place has a complex and layered history. As a community dedicated to creativity, MCAD is committed to ongoing efforts to support and advocate for American Indian Nations and peoples.


Nondiscrimination Policy

MCAD admits students of any race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, or marital status to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, or marital status in the administration of its educational policies, scholarship and loan programs, and other school-administered programs.