Third year design students tend to be equally anxious and excited at the prospect of their pending last year in academia. They enjoy the comforts afforded to them by design school. Yet they wonder what the professional world will be like when they finally graduate and take flight into their careers. It’s at this point, just before they really need to begin thinking about what they want to be when they grow up, that Miami University presents them with their professional practices course, the Business of Design.

Over the course of the semester, this course covers such issues as crafting the perfect resume, writing the best cover letter, and how to perform in an interview. But it also discusses the different industry disciplines, what’s needed to get in each, and how you might focus your last year at Miami to meet the portfolio requirements such a discipline might expect.

To keep students engaged, a series of assignments are presented throughout the course, including a resume and cover letter design, as well as a month-long time management experiment, where students track their activities and develop an infographic that summarizes their findings.