Design Fusion Certificate Program

The Office of Human Resources, in collaboration with the Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion in the School of Design, is excited to offer a groundbreaking professional development opportunity for CMU faculty and staff.

For many years, the School of Design has provided customized workshops both on- and off-campus. Since 2016, we have delivered customized workshops and courses for Highmark, the United States Air Force Academy, the Software Engineering Institute, Heinz College, and many other organizations. Now, through the Center for Design Fusion, we are expanding our reach to include a renewed focus on our own campus community.

Modeled after the center’s Professional Education Program for external organizations, the Design Fusion Certificate Program is designed to foster a more creative, imaginative, and collaborative culture across the university. This new program was piloted in 2024 and has served as a key catalyst to unlock the creative potential of our faculty, staff, and administrators. It supports integrative thinking, sparks innovation, and cultivates the ability to frame and act on big ideas.

We are driven by our commitment to excellence in education, our passion for fostering innovation, and our dedication to empowering individuals and organizations to achieve their full creative potential. Reflecting this mission, our programs are flexible in scale—ranging from small group engagements to initiatives that serve entire departments and divisions. For example, our faculty delivered a multi-day Design Thinking workshop to over 300 Tepper School of Business MBA students, marking our largest single delivery to date.

On this page:

• Nomination Process
• Program Format
• Session Schedules

Nomination Process

Participants are selected through nomination by college and division leadership. Nominations typically occur a few months before a scheduled session.

Leaders should identify motivated team members in various roles to foster a culture of creativity and innovation that promotes both personal and organizational growth.

Nominees should meet the following criteria:

• Ability and willingness to attend training and presentations in person as outlined in the program schedule
• Employees at all levels, both supervisors and individual contributors, are welcome to participate
• Responsibilities of current role could benefit from an increased ability to apply agile and creative thinking to existing processes and systems
• Current performance reflects an ability to work effectively with others
• Consistently meets or exceeds expectations for performance at CMU
• Supervisory approval for release time to participate in the program and payment of tuition ($2,250/participant)

Program Format

Our program brings the same high-impact tools and frameworks used with external partners directly to the CMU community enabling faculty and staff to collaborate more effectively, think more expansively, and innovate more confidently. Participants will work both individually and in teams with colleagues from across the university. Through hands-on experiences and guided exploration, they will learn design methods and creative strategies that shift perspectives and spark new approaches to complex challenges. Each cohort will focus on a university facility, service, or system as a real-world case study, developing proposals for meaningful, strategic improvement.

Participants should expect to attend in person and devote a total of 25 hours to the weeklong program with 21 hours of class time and four additional hours of independent work. Graduates will earn a non-degree certificate from the School of Design upon successful completion.

The Design Fusion Certificate Program is more than just professional development—it's an invitation to become a catalyst for innovation and change within the CMU community. By participating, you’ll gain the tools, mindset, and network to lead with creativity and purpose. Whether you’re solving complex problems, reimagining systems, or building cross-campus connections, this program equips you to do it with confidence and vision. 

View the program brochure [pdf] for more details.

Session Schedules

All sessions will be delivered in person at the Ballay Center in the School of Design (Margaret Morrison).