
Photo courtesy of Peter Grace
When Peter Grace enrolled at the University of Minnesota, he thought he had a good sense of his career path—he would major in history, go on to get a PhD, and eventually become an academic. But it didn’t take long for him to reconsider this plan.
“I didn’t really feel like I had a creative outlet,” he says. “In the meantime, I was getting interested in design.”
Grace considered transferring from the College of Liberal Arts to the College of Design to study architecture or industrial product design, but decided against it when he realized it would probably take him six years to earn his undergraduate degree. Instead, he decided to pursue a Bachelor of Individualized Studies (BIS), focusing on interdisciplinary design, urban studies, and public health, in addition to his history BA.
“Getting into design, I became interested in something that I wasn’t necessarily gifted at right away, but it was new and exciting,” he says. “And I saw this critical intersection between history and design where I think there’s a lot of potential.”
Designing a degree
Pursuing a BIS degree is more involved than the average major declaration, requiring a written proposal and a formal approval process. Grace was impressed with the assistance he received from faculty advisers while developing his proposal and with the ongoing support he received throughout his four years at the U of M.
“I don’t really know of any other institution where I would have been able to come in and do what I did—very interdisciplinary, specialized work—as an undergrad,” he says.
As a junior, Grace was awarded a Hedley Donovan Scholarship for history research that he used to travel Europe and do archival research on the Italian industrial designer Joe Colombo. After more than a year of study, Grace presented his honors thesis on the role of ergonomics and gender in Colombo’s work alongside a BIS capstone project consisting of Grace’s own furniture designs and a critical look at design and history pedagogies. He was awarded summa cum laude honors for his work.
To facilitate his thesis and capstone work, Grace brought together faculty and staff from across the history, art history, product design, and architecture departments as well as the U’s Goldstein Museum of Design.
“I was really impressed with the excitement of faculty to help me pursue what I was interested in, even if it was something that wasn’t really being covered in course material,” he says.
Set up for success
Grace graduated in May 2024 and is already putting his education into action with an internship focused on socially responsible landscape architecture in the curatorial department at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. He says his scholarships, including those from the Arthur and Audrey Berggren Endowment Fund, Pass Family Endowment, and Iron Range Merit Scholarship Fund, have helped to set him up for success in a highly competitive—although oftentimes less lucrative—profession.
“I had a couple different scholarships that enabled me to graduate debt free, which is just amazing,” he says. “It’s made it a lot easier for me to take risks professionally, to travel and gain valuable experience abroad, to take the opportunity that might not pay as much in the short term, but in the long run could really make a huge difference.”
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