About IVCD

Based on Taiwan's long-term development trends, the Department of Visual Communication Design (VCD dept.) is established in responding to the educational demands of commercial designers in the culture and creative industries, the design industries and the digital content industries. The VCD dept. meets the educational objectives of Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology (a.k.a. STUST) and the College of Digital Design (a.k.a. CDD), which are "train the students possessing the international perspective on humanities, technologies, innovative thinking and the practical abilities" for STUST and "train the students to be excellent design talents possessing the abilities of creative thinking, aesthetic evaluations, and the technology applications" for CDD. Thus, the main objective of integral developments of the VCD dept. consists of training the students to meet the demands of relevant industries, promoting the achievements in the research and development of cultural creations.

To response to the trend of internationalization for the cultural and creative industry, design industry and the digital content industry, the "International master's program in English affiliating to the VCD dept. (IVCD)" is established. The IVCD master's program emphasizes the humanities and cultures, technological, creative thinking and international perspective from the design-related viewpoints. These fields of design-related viewpoints include communication design, product design, interactive design, game design, popular music creation, movie creation and animation design. The courses of the design-related fields are to conduct in English.

○ The main objective is to

Educate the graduate students to possess the notions of design practice, the international insights and the international communication abilities, so as to respond to the industrial demand and the design tendency in the future.
Discuss the wide-range design-related knowledge to train the capabilities of design thinking and to cultivate the possibility of research development.
Promote the understanding of lifelong learning and the consciousness of social concern for graduate students.

○ Core competencies

To impart the professional knowledge of aesthetic appreciation and creative design for the visual communication field.
To cultivate the students’ capability of design planning and project implementation in the field of design research.
To train the students’ ability of design creation description and academic thesis writing.
To develop the students’ individual problem solving and the innovative thinking for design-related topic.
To cultivate the students’ ability of coordinating and integrating with the expertise of different fields.
To broaden the students’ global perspective and to mature the students’ capability of planning, management and leadership.
To earn the ability to lead, manage and plan.
To develop the students’ competency of self-initiative learning and advancement for lifelong.