Signature Experience
It is our responsibility to engage and think locally and on the global stage. There are few modes of teaching or learning that carry such transformative potential as study abroad. We believe that this potential emerges from a holistic program of study that includes direct mentoring, field studies, coursework, and a collaborative approach to teaching and learning. This approach builds on the cross-cultural exchange that is at the very heart of the signature experience. Most of our undergraduate students participate in our Study Abroad program in Urbino, Italy to satisfy the Signature Experience requirement.
Explore Our Students' Global Design Work
Visit the portfolio of student work from the Study Abroad Program in Urbino.
Global Practice in Design
Today, the practice of design is framed by a set of issues––from water to immigration, from the environment to urban growth––embracing a diversity of questions, practices, and approaches. While our work as designers remains local and immediate, it also must address the larger questions that are propelling change. We believe that Study Abroad provides a rich framework for practice in a dynamic world where global, international, regional and cross-cultural issues shape the profession.
When confronted by culturally meaningful artifacts, buildings, and cities, classical and regional forms, and rich experiences, students’ perceptions change. The world ceases being composed of the known, the abstract, or the familiar, and becomes a rich field of cultural knowledge, values, and narratives that is open to each student’s inquiry and discovery.
Throughout our School and its programs, we value experiential learning. Our students make connections between direct and indirect knowledge, the classroom, and the world, the global and the local, their own thoughts and other ways of thinking or inhabiting the world. Following their semester abroad, our students return to San Antonio with rich experiences embedded into their lives. These new and meaningful experiences are resources that our students draw upon throughout their life and professional career. They also become a mirror and a lens that enables each student to perceive themselves and the familiar in a new and exciting way.
Signature Experience is a requirement in our architecture and interior design undergraduate programs. Graduate options, including exchange programs, are also available.
Your future starts here
Offering degrees and certificates in engineering, architecture, construction science and management, historic preservation, interior design, and urban and regional planning at undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels
9
Undergraduate Majors
15
Master's Degrees
6
Doctoral Degrees
8
Certificate Programs
