Industrial Design Education Census (3.0)- OVPR Curate Program

The Industrial Design Education Census has been an on-going collaborative research effort focused on building a better understanding of who is teaching industrial design in the United States. The motivations for this work are rooted in an interest in growing diversity in the field of industrial design, based on the hypothesis that the demographics of instructors influence the demographics of their students. There is currently no standard database or way to track industrial design educators (including demographics, degrees earned, and career paths) in the U.S. Our team distributed a survey in 2021 and 2022, and presented results in 2022 and 2023 at the International Engineering and Product Design in Education Conference (E&PDE.) To date, survey results have revealed numerous unexpected trends (including the tendency for tenured faculty to have worked at more than one institution) and significant gaps (lack of disability representation) among industrial design educators.