Designing the Future
Although the interior design major at Utah State University can be competitive, the students in the program come out with plenty of opportunities.
“When students leave USU are in high demand in the real world,” said Kevin Wolley, the commercial studio teacher.
Students learn a wide variety of skills about more than just those traditionally associated with interior design.
“We teach them the tools of the interior design profession and they can apply it to that or they can branch out,” said Tom Peterson, the interior design program director. “We don’t want them to think myopically like all they can think is interiors.”
“There’s al lot of options they can embrace once they leave our program,” he said.
More than just interiors
Examples of the wide variety of classes in the major include History of Interior Furnishings, Interior Design Theory, Residential and Commercial Design Studios, Computer Aided Drafting and Design, Interior Materials and Construction, Architectural Graphics and Space Planning .
“We built a house – the interior and everything in the house. We had to build the floor plan and build it up and do everything in the construction,” said Audrey Cummings, a sophomore majoring in interior design.
The classes round students out as very marketable graduates, Peterson said.
“Our objective is to graduate people who can think, who can design and in order to get the job they have to exhibit those two characteristics in a portfolio,” Peterson said. “We intend to graduate students with portfolios that are competitive.”
For any undergraduate major, there is a required, supervised internship scheduled in the summer between the junior and senior years.
Peterson said after the junior year they have skills enough to take advantage of being in an internship, and come back with an understanding of what they yet have to learn.
“It’s our feeling that students need a leg up to get the job they want when they graduate and if they’ve had some experience, some exposure, all the better,” he added.
Many students travel the world for their internships.
“Last year we had two students in Edinburgh, Scotland, one in Newcastle, England, one in Boston, two in New York City, Washington, D.C., Tennessee, and some in the West Coast,” Peterson said.
For most students an internships can transfer to a job.
“One of the students that spent her internship in Scotland has now been hired at that firm to go back and work for them,” he said.
Another graduating senior, filled out 10 applications, and spent her spring break interviewing, he said.
“As a result of her 10 interviews, she was offered 10 positions,” Peterson said.
Requirements and options for the major
There are 210 undergraduate students and 10 graduate students in the major and admission is really open to anyone who is admitted to the university he said.
One of the requirements for the major is to take foundation courses for two years, and at the end of the sophomore year have a portfolio review, Peterson said.
In the portfolio review, the faculty look at what students have produced the first two years and review their grade point average and career objectives, he said.
They then sift through all the student work, and make a decision as to which students would best go through a studio emphasis or a design sales and marketing emphasis, Peterson said.
Only seven courses differentiate the two emphasizes.
“There are great job opportunities at the end of either of those paths. They’re different but exciting,” he said.
The admission process is not very difficult but the sophomore portfolio review is a little stressing, he said.
Cummings said only 20 students out of 50 get into the program.
The project process is very competitive, so if students finish early they shouldn’t show other students your finished project, she said.
She and her roommate both pulled an all-nighter the day before their portfolios were due.
“You know where you’re going to end up in the end if you keep working on it,” she said.
Projects aren’t like studying for a test, where you may study too hard, she added. “The longer you work on the project the better it gets.”
Beyond interior design profession
Cummings has had people say to her “Oh, you’re an interior design major. Can you help me with this room?”
She learned about space planning and helped a lady design her kitchen. She is already practicing her major.
There are also more options for practice and learning while still studying in the major.
Last spring students entered room designs into Southern Accents magazine design competition and one student won first place and two others were first and second runners up, Peterson said.
The interior design program has support from the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation, where it receives funding to have famous interior designers to do lectures.
“Two weeks ago had Mitchell Mauk, who is one of the nation’s leading exhibit designers. He was here and spent three days working with students,” Peterson said.
And last week Charlotte Moss, an interior designer from New York City, was on campus. She lectured on creativity and inspiration, he added.
“[The lectures] just makes a degree so much more alive. The students get really excited and then they produce even better stuff,” Peterson said.
With the guest lecturers, students stay in touch with what is really happening in the profession, while they go through the curriculum, he said.
“We expose our students to these kinds of things so they don’t loose track of what options are there,” he added.
One credible program
USU is one of 130 interior design programs in North America that is accredited by The Foundation for Interior Design Education and Research, Peterson said.
“As such that’s a stamp of approval that we meet a fairly rigorous set of requirements, and that our program is routinely reviewed, so that it continues to meet professional and industry standards.”
He thinks that aids them in recruiting certainly students should look for a program accredited by that organization if they are going to explore a degree in interior design.
“That’s also something that the profession recognizes as significant for internships and employment, it’s kind of like a seal of approval,” he said.
Interior design is a growing profession.
Between now and 2017 the employment in interior design profession will grow to 17 percent, Peterson said.
Why major in interior design?
“I’ve always known I wanted to be an interior designer since junior high,” Cummings said. “I was going to do graphic design and I didn’t want to just do strictly graphic design and work with just computers.”
Her favorite part is the design boards, and finding her own color schemes.
“It’s an intense major and supposed to be the hardest in Utah State’s programs,” she said.
In design, she said students pull from other ideas to make their own ideas.
“It’s hard to be abstract and so original,” she said
In one of her classes they designed a chair and some people used an idea of using parts of other chairs to make a chair, from a magazine.
“We’re after originality. We’re after creativity,” Peterson said.
He said they predominantly train people to think and to design.
“You don’t have to think of yourself as an artist,” he said.
For those interested in viewing the students work, the Interior Senior Portfolio Exhibit will run in the Tippets gallery until April 15.
-ranaebang@cc.usu.edu
Students display their work on walls set up in the Tippets Gallery. (Photo by Ryan Talbot)