Design Cultures & Creativity (DCC) is a dynamic, social, and rigorous living-learning program in the Honors College at the University of Maryland, College Park. As one of the Honors College's eight living-learning programs and one of just two supported by the university's College of Arts and Humanities, we locate ourselves at the vibrant intersections of arts and technology. DCC has carved out a special place for driven, creative, and artistic-minded students to simultaneously enjoy the access and comforts of both a small, liberal arts-college experience and the resources and privileges of a large research campus. DCC students take classes together, share their lives in a beautiful residence hall, and forge lasting community bonds through workshops, competitions, and social events. While the DCC curriculum is typically completed during a student's first two years at the University of Maryland, the experiences and lessons they glean last a lifetime.
DCC's mission is not to prepare you for the world as it currently exists, but to equip and empower you to change it for the better—by utilizing, hacking, challenging, and innovating technology; by designing structures, systems, methods, and tools that make meaningful positive impact on human life and culture; by devising and reviving ways to care for the most vulnerable and threatened communities among us; and, by wielding your unique skills, passions, and talents with power, confidence, and joy.
Welcome to DCC—we're glad you're here! And, we hope you will always find your way home to us.
WE ARE CREATIVES
As members of the university's Honors College, DCC students are already among UMD's most intelligent and high-achieving. DCC, however, is where their creative selves get the chance to shine. And, we take creativity very seriously. As an impulse, an intentional practice, and a mechanism of survival, creativity has to be honed, fostered, channeled, supported, and celebrated. We aim to offer courses, resources, and opportunities to help students emerge not only with interesting things to say about the world, but also the imagination, tools, habits, and confidence to build new ones.
Situated at the productive collision of arts and technology, DCC therefore fosters an open, collaborative, and social environment that encourages students to explore relationships between design, culture, and creativity and confront the world with new, innovative, and groundbreaking ideas for a brighter, safer tomorrow for all. We are passionate about emerging technologies and their impact on the world and its people and, even more importantly, how our designs can make our worlds a better place for humans and all other living things to thrive. DCC students are innovative thinkers and makers who engage in research and collaborative projects that engage issues pertaining to identity, connectivity, social justice, art, design, and all things creative in an era when digital tools and media link us on a scale unprecedented in human history.
WE ARE INTERDISCIPLINARY
The world belongs to all of us, so DCC strives to be a home for people with diverse interests, from different walks of life. DCC encourages students to think beyond disciplinary boundaries and approach problems from multiple perspectives by providing them with the resources to tackle any issue or goal. Our courses, makerspaces, and workshops provide spaces for exploration, thinking through ideas, and experimenting with processes of building, designing, and creating in the digital age. DCC strongly values inclusivity and aims to cultivate a community of life-long learners who are critically engaged thinkers. Our students are the future’s makers and doers, able to expand our notions of human potential—not merely technologically, but also socially and creatively.
So, we've taken great care to cultivate a community that represents a wide range and number of majors and departments on campus, including: American Studies, Aerospace Engineering, Agricultural and Veterinary Medicine, Animal Sciences, Architecture, Art History, Art Studio, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Biology, Business, Cell Biology and Genetics, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Criminal Justice, Economics, Education, Electrical Engineering, English Language and Literature, Finance, Fire Protection Engineering, Foreign Language Education, Government and Politics, History, Information Systems, Journalism, Letters and Sciences, Marketing, Materials Science and Engineering, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Music Education, Music, Nursing, Physics, Physiology and Neurobiology, Psychology, Secondary Education, Sociology... and more!
This means that DCC classrooms are replete with different kinds of thinkers, constantly exposing each other to novel ways of approaching problems, understanding human history and progress, asking meaningful questions, and communicating with one another. This is the gift of an interdisciplinary education and environment! You get to move beyond the specific training you receive in your chosen major and learn every day about how students and faculty in other majors read, think, ask, research, and create! You'll emerge from DCC a more well-rounded, thoughtful, open-minded, humble, and knowledge-seeking human than ever before.
WE SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE
Because are students are drawn from so many different intellectual, social, economic, and religious backgrounds, DCC is home to folks who communicate in a variety of ways. We are polyglots and speak 0101010, 1337, 8421-code, African American Vernacular English, American Sign Language, Anime, Arabic, ASP.NET, BASIC, Bengali, Blazon, C, C#, C++, Cantonese Chinese, Chinese-Shanghai Dialect, CSS/CSS3, Dubstep, Ducreux Meme Speak, English (American), English (Broken), English (International), English (Internet), English (UK), Eye contact, Facial expression, French, German, Gibberish, Hausa, Hebrew (Biblical), Hebrew (Modern), Hindi, HSK (Humming and Screaming and Kicking), HTML/XHTML, IDL, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Japanese Internet-speak, Java, JavaScript/JQuery, Judeo-Aramaic, Kikamba, Korean, LaTeX, Latin, Lisp, LOGO, LOLCat speak, Love and rainbows and friendship, Mandarin Chinese, Math (it’s the language of the universe!), Mind reading, Music!, MySQL, Nerd, Objective-C, OCaml, Painting/Drawing, PHP, Pig Latin, Pirate, Pokemon, Portuguese, Python, Ruby (fortunately), Ruby (unfortunately), Russian, Spanglish, Spanish, Taiwanese, Telepathy, Thai, Turkish, Ubbi Dubbi, Urdu, Vietnamese, Visual Basic, XML, Y86, Yoruba, — — .-. … . / -.-. — -.. .