The HCDE Department is currently in the midst of a multi-year undergraduate curriculum review and revision process. We have created this page to help answer some common questions we’ve received from students and other community members regarding these changes. We will continue to update this page with additional information as we proceed through the process of gaining approval for and implementing these curricular changes.
HCDE continuously reviews the undergraduate curriculum to identify areas of success and opportunities that will enhance student learning. These program changes are the result of a 3-year comprehensive review that included faculty, staff, and students. An additional motivation for the changes is to bring the program into compliance with the General Engineering Degree requirements specified by ABET.
The University of Washington is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), one of six regional accrediting organizations recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and thus, HCDE students already graduate from a regionally accredited university. HCDE is seeking additional ABET accreditation, which is the international gold standard for all undergraduate engineering programs. Students with an ABET-accredited degree may be more attractive to employers who specifically seek graduates with human centered design skills within a general engineering degree program.
As we make this transition to a new curriculum, it is important to note that regardless of whether a student graduates with our degree pre- or post-accreditation, we are confident that the HCDE Department consistently offers students access to an outstanding education and excellent employment opportunities.
Some of the changes to the HCDE BS degree requirements include:
- Updates to the HCDE math statistics, science, and engineering fundamentals course lists
- Requiring all students to complete at least one statistics course
- Removing ENGR 231 from the HCDE degree requirements, which will no longer be taught by the College of Engineering
- Changes to the 300-level core courses for the major
- Changes to the experiential learning credits for the major
- Creating 2 separate categories of HCDE electives
These changes have now been approved, and students entering the HCDE major in Autumn 2024 or later can refer to the HCDE BS degree requirements for students admitted Autumn 2024 onwards for more information.
The most important change for students who have not yet applied to the HCDE major relates to the HCDE admission prerequisites. Beginning with the students applying to enter HCDE in Autumn 2026, MATH 120, PHYS 114-116, and PSYCH 202 will no longer be eligible to meet HCDE admission prerequisites, and these courses, along with the accompanying PHYS labs (PHYS 117-119), will no longer apply towards HCDE degree requirements. Students planning to apply to HCDE for Autumn 2026 or later should therefore plan to select other courses from the HCDE admission prerequisite list to complete the HCDE admission prerequisites.
Although most of the other changes to our requirements for graduation from the HCDE major will primarily impact courses not taken until after a student has entered the HCDE program, we have also made some changes to the courses that can apply to our math, statistics, science, and engineering fundamentals requirements. Prospective HCDE students who are getting started on these requirements can refer to the course lists linked from the HCDE BS degree requirements for students admitted Autumn 2024 onwards for more information.
There are 3 main reasons why the HCI Option and Data Science Option were retired:
- To reduce student confusion: We have found that there is often a disconnect between the expectations of students and employers/graduate programs regarding the impact of transcriptable degree options, and students’ ability to summarize and reflect on their coursework, experiential learning, and skills gained via our degree is more important to employers than their degree option.
- To remove redundancy: For the HCI Option specifically, the overwhelming majority of students who complete this option do so by taking 400-level HCDE courses exclusively. This means that a student could complete the HCDE Standard (a.k.a. Individualized) Option or the HCDE HCI Option by taking identical courses. In other words, there is no longer a substantive curricular distinction between these 2 degree options, and HCDE students who are interested in pursuing HCI-related topics can do so within our Standard Option.
- To meet accreditation requirements: Retiring the options ensures that HCDE students complete the bulk of their upper division coursework within the HCDE Department via courses taught by HCDE faculty. This allows us to continually assess, improve, and modify our courses to make sure they are meeting ABET standards.
It is also worth noting that the retirement of the HCI and Data Science Options does not represent a substantive change in our HCDE course offerings or the topics covered within the HCDE curriculum.
If you will be graduating in Summer 2027 or earlier, you will not be included in the graduating class evaluated by ABET.
If you will be graduating in Autumn 2027 or later, we recommend keeping an eye on your UW email for future announcements about our progress towards seeking ABET accreditation.
Program evaluators from ABET may sample student assignment submissions as part of the process. Your class assignments are protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which safeguards the privacy of student educational records. Although your assignments might be shown to ABET accreditors to demonstrate student learning outcomes, your personally identifiable information will be kept confidential. No personal details will be disclosed in relation to your assignment submissions.
The HCDE General Option was created by the HCDE Department as a way to track which students were admitted to the major under our former curriculum. The primary difference between the two options is that the General Option allows students to count MATH 120, PHYS 114-119, and PSYCH 202 towards their HCDE math and science requirements; these courses will not be permitted to apply towards the HCDE admission prerequisites or HCDE math and science requirements for students entering the major in Autumn 2026 or later.
Moving forward, the HCDE degree program will be the primary pathway to earn a Bachelor of Science in Human Centered Design & Engineering degree. Students who entered the major under our former curriculum and who are moved to the General Option may be eligible to petition to switch to the updated curriculum (see below).
Eligibility to pursue the new degree requirements will depend on several factors, including: when a student entered the program, when they will complete their degree, and their course selections.
Students who will be graduating in Summer 2027 or earlier will not be eligible to switch to a new curriculum introduced after they declared the major since they will not be included in the graduating class evaluated by ABET.
Students who will be graduating in Autumn 2027 or later will receive further information about whether they may be eligible to petition to switch to the new curriculum as our timeline for seeking ABET accreditation is clarified.