Colleagues,

Welcome back!  It's great to see everyone back on campus, and students in the classroom and halls.  I'm looking forward to another exciting and successful year.

While I usually try to welcome everyone back on the first Monday of the semester, last week I had the opportunity to spend a couple days down in Rochester at Mayo's Transform Symposium.  The annual conference brings together design and health professionals from across the globe, and this year I highlighted the ever-expanding health-related work many of you are addressing here at the College.

You can see highlights on D@MN here, and the presentation itself was just made available at Mayo and can be viewed here.  But one of the things that struck me during my two days in Rochester was the shear breadth of the work many of you undertake related to health and how no other higher ed institutions - or private companies for that matter - have the kind of work (completed and/or underway) that we have here at our College.

This work exemplifies our unique mission and vision, and highlights how design can both take into account and affect the triple bottom line (people, planet & profit).   

I want to thank those who helped me with my presentation.  I'm always looking for more examples of projects like this so I encourage folks to share those with me.

Again, welcome back, and I look forward to seeing everyone at our next College assembly on October 5.

Sincerely,

Tom Fisher
Professor and Dean
College of Design