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Let's go farther, faster.

The Masters in Strategic Communication Design (STCM) evolves students into design professionals through a progression of innovative learning experiences within a single calendar year––from August to August––in a series of three contiguous semesters: Fall Semester, Spring Semester, and Summer Session D. The STCM lives and breathes within a learning culture shaped by collective creativity, fueled by design thinking, and focused on innovation that transcends the divide between technology and design. Our mission is to transform our students into professionals able to lead into the future by leveraging the power of design to solve problems.

 

The STCM champions the global value of innovation.

We do so through design thinking, pointing to new ways of learning, working, seeing, thinking, and making within the everyday challenges of the 21st century. The boundaries between design disciplines are evolving and increasingly blurring. And so are the traditional boundaries between design and everyday life––between work, play, social innovation, leadership, and management, all of which are accompanied by an increasing awareness and dedication to value-driven efforts. These developments are not singular to design but are evolving throughout an international creative economy that is increasingly led by designers.
 

We approach design through a lens of collective creativity.

We are situated within a culture of learning fueled by design thinking and our primary focus is on imagining, designing, and building innovative products and experiences that transcend the divide between technology and design. The STCM provides a transformative learning experience that creates design professionals who can and will lead into the future. This is true. Whether your intentions are the pursuit of entrepreneurial options or gaining a leadership position in a firm, agency, or nonprofit, the STCM graduate program elevates and extends your potential as a design professional, wherever and however you choose to apply it.

After Graduation

Want to learn more about our graduates and where they are now? Read more about them. A shortlist of prominent companies our graduates have worked for include Google, Apple, Uber, Facebook (Meta), Twitter, Dropbox, AirBnB, Pinterest, Spotify, Logitech, RG/A, Hewlett Packard, Strava, PlayStation, Kodak, Salesforce, Adobe, Comcast and Time Warner.

Per our most recent survey of STCM master’s program graduates, placement outcomes were as follows:  

  • 43% of students were placed in full-time positions prior to graduation
  • 60% of students were placed within one month of graduating
  • 84% of students were placed within three months of graduating
  • 90% of students were placed within six months of graduating
  • 50% of our alumni have held or currently hold a position in management with direct reports

More About the Studio

Located in a state-of-the art studio in the heart of Boulder's entrepreneurial tech community (Twitter is our upstairs neighbor; TechStars is across the street), STCM's new culture of learning explores the potential of design as a critically useful tool for humanity in a world that is changing more rapidly than ever before. Our positioning is timely and encouraging. Recent figures indicate that design is the fastest growing sector within the creative industries worldwide and it is also increasingly playing a key strategic role in an evolving global economy. Our graduate design program is entirely project-based and our students learn in a dynamic studio environment. Entering students choose a primary path in either brand design or experience design, providing a throughline which focuses and prepares them to hit the ground running qualified for current industry design positions in branding and UX. All students enroll in RE, our product-based open studio that combines entrepreneurial design and critical making. RE is where we prepare our students to think and act as designer-founders, who imagine, design, develop, make, and launch products which have the potential to become design-driven startups. To learn more about designer founders, read this. And all students will also develop their individual portfolios for industry positions in BookLab, our creative laboratory whose purpose is to evolve student project work within a professional portfolio that captures and expresses an original, individual vision that can guide a successful career in design.