Building off of the research methods and design practices experimented with during the first year, the Thesis 1 course will require students (individually or in small groups) to independently develop a large, but focused design-led research project that emerges out of their stated research interests. Students are expected to initiate and outline this project during this first semester of their second year, with the expectation that they will devote the majority of their final semester to this project. The course will culminate in a presentation that articulates the scope and scale of the research project, identifies its relevance to an external community or public, sharing the process of prototyping and a work plan for the spring semester. Throughout the course the Faculty will review with students the nature and process of a master’s thesis and will help the students to craft a research project that is relevant, innovative, and original. Additionally, it is central to the working methodology of the MFA in Transdisciplinary Design that projects be collaborative, and for the thesis project students are expected to identify a team of “stakeholders”—whether internal (other students) or external to the program—that will form the basis of this collaborative effort. A special emphasis will be placed in this course on the early production of design-led research, engaging with communities, sketches, prototypes, and other forms of visualization and materialization that reinforce the design-led emphasis of the thesis project.