By Erin DostalThe Daily Northwestern

Two new masters programs focusing on engineering, design and marketing will begin this fall, pending final approval.

The Master of Science in Engineering Design and Innovation (EDI) and the Master of Design Innovation (MDI) programs result from a gift announced in March by the co-founders of Crate and Barrel, NU alumni Gordon and Carole Segal.

EDI will be a one-year program providing engineering graduate students interested in design with a direct avenue for study. In the past, Northwestern engineering graduate students pursuing careers in design had to create ad hoc programs.

The program will offer students the opportunity to observe how people interact with products and then to begin their own design projects, Colgate said.

“This is really a program that’s for engineers … who want to work in a creative designlike setting,” said McCormick Prof. Edward Colgate, one of the co-directors of the programs.

The MDI program will be offered jointly through McCormick and the Kellogg School of Management, which will allow students to earn both a Masters in Business Administration and an engineering master’s degree in two years.

The programs will initially offer many overlapping courses, said Prof. Don Norman, another co-director of the programs.

Norman said students who enter EDI will likely be recent college graduates, while the MDI program is intended for those who already have three or four years of work in the field and who decide to return to school to school full time.

The university launched its first initiative in design education in the 1990s with its Engineering Design and Communication courses, during which first-year students design new products to solve real-world problems for actual clients.

In 2005, the university opened the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center, which houses McCormick’s design programs.

“If you look at our history, we’ve been building toward this for a while,” Colgate said.

MDI will be part of the existing Master of Management and Manufacturing program, Norman said.

“I’m really very excited by this,” Norman said. “We’ve found a tremendous amount of interest in the students.”

Students can currently apply to both programs.

While both programs are expected to start in the fall, they will not become official until a vote of approval by the NU faculty. The programs have already been approved by committees in both McCormick and Kellogg.

Reach Erin Dostal at [email protected].