Smith College

For Faculty & Staff

The initiative is an inspirational reimagining of the liberal arts in which the humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines work in synergy. We aim to serve as a bridge between disciplines and to open space for interdisciplinary making and doing.

Your Research × Design/Making

Apply for a Faculty Co-creator Fellowship in Fall 2025 to explore the intersections between your scholarship and design. While design can be a way to produce products, buildings, experiences, and technologies, it can also be a way to investigate and explore the world. The practice of designing allows us to make abstract ideas tangible, iterate and try out ideas over time, and co-create with others.

As a faculty co-creator, you would share your current research ideas, questions, and challenges, and a DTI design researcher would respond with possible design tools, methods, and/or processes that could provide new perspectives. We will collaborate to try out these approaches and experiment with ways to excavate ideas. Co-creators will receive a $1,250 stipend, plus materials budget.

Apply by August 10, 2025

Additional Information

During our decennial year, the Design Thinking Initiative (DTI) is investigating how interdisciplinary design and making can further connect across disciplines at Smith. As part of this effort, we are inviting Smith faculty to bring your research questions into our space and join us in exploring the intersections between your scholarship and design.

While design can be a way to produce products, buildings, experiences, and technologies, it can also be a way to investigate and explore the world. The practice of designing allows us to make abstract ideas tangible, iterate and try out ideas over time, and co-create with others. As a Faculty Co-creator, you would share your current research ideas, questions, and challenges, and we will respond with possible design tools, methods, and/or processes that could provide new perspectives. We will collaborate with you to develop novel approaches, discover inroads, and experiment with ways to excavate ideas.

No design experience is necessary. In fact, priority will be given to faculty who have not yet engaged deeply with the Design Thinking Initiative. This is intended to broaden our reach and ensure that our work is supportive to the entire Smith community.

  • We will schedule 10 hours of studio time with you over the duration of the fall semester. This could be a one-hour weekly meeting over 10 weeks, or more intensive blocks—whatever works best for you. During this time, you would meet with Alix Gerber, design researcher and Assistant Director of the Design Thinking Initiative. At first, Alix will get to know your research and share some practices from design that may be particularly helpful. Then, studio time could involve creative exercises, making, collaborative intersections with other faculty, etc. At the end, we will reflect on challenges and successes.
  • Our first meeting will be between August 20–September 26 to get to know each other, to schedule the semester’s studio time, and to give you a chance to share your work with Alix.
  • You will receive a stipend of $1,250. Throughout the semester, we’ll make use of DTI tools and materials, and we will also set aside $250 per faculty co-creator to spend on any additional supplies needed for our work together.
  • Rather than seeking to create a finished design product, our time together will be focused on design as a process. We’ll venture into the unknown and learn what we can. We hope this sparks ideas and new approaches to your research. For DTI, this work will inform future offerings to faculty that are nourishing to teaching and scholarship, and it will help us communicate about design in ways that connect.
  • We will schedule a time for all faculty co-creators to share this work with the broader Smith community at the end of the fall semester or early in spring 2026.

To apply, complete and submit an application form no later than August 10, 2025. We will select proposals from across academic divisions. The application will ask you for:

  • Your division/department
  • One paragraph describing your research. What are your current research interests and questions? What is most exciting to you? What challenges are you grappling with?
  • One paragraph describing why you are interested in bringing your research into conversation with design. What hopes or concerns do you have about exploring your scholarship through design?

Forms of Course Support

Guest lecture(s) and/or workshop(s)

We are available to visit courses to introduce the theory and practice of design thinking through lectures and/or workshop(s). Examples of this have included; an introduction to design thinking for courses considering the built environment or experience design; a series of workshops introducing students to the power of making their ideas tangible through prototyping; a series of workshops introducing design principles and techniques for modeling, mapping, or visualizing concepts. Please complete a Google form to request this form of course support and schedule a time to meet with Alix to discuss. For fall 2025, please submit requests by August 10 for priority consideration.

Use of the classroom at DTI (Capen Annex)

Classes that integrate design or making in some way into their curriculum or could benefit from our flexible design thinking classroom (moveable and adjustable height tables, whiteboards, sticky notes, markers, and access to many lo-fi-making supplies). Please complete this Google Form and email capenannex@smith.edu to alert us of your request for the use of CA101. The room functions best at a max of 16 students but can squeeze 20 (not that comfortably). You can always check our classroom use calendar posted on our home page to check availability or search ‘The Design Thinking Initiative’ in Google calendar.  

Tools and materials check-out 

If you need supplies for simple making activities that can take place in your own classroom or to support a class project beyond use of Capen Annex please fill out this Google Form and email capenannex@smith.edu to alert us of the request. We can’t promise everything requested, but might suggest alternative supplies more readily available to us. The confirmation email will indicate where to pick your supplies up in the 'Pick-Up' bin at the entrance to Capen Annex. That same confirmation email will indicate which tools we expect to be returned to DTI by the end of the semester. If you’re not sure what supplies or materials you might need for an intended project simply schedule a meeting with Alix Gerber to discuss.

Class tour/introduction to DTI 

An introduction to the tools and materials including laser cutters, a vinyl cutter, 3D printers, and how to use the studios safely can help students see the possibilities for making available to them at DTI. Schedule a tour of the space by filling out a Google form and emailing capenannex@smith.edu to alert us of your request.

Please visit our Studio Use & Hours page for more information on our space use policies.