Brief Biography: A native of Lake City, MN, Julie spent the first half of her career as an interior design practitioner, is an NCIDQ (National Council for Interior Design Qualification), Wisconsin Registered Interior Designer (WRID), and a WELL Accredited Professional (WELL AP). She has been involved in higher education since first teaching as adjunct faculty at UW-Stout from 2001-03 and 2006-08 while pursuing her Masters and PhD at the U of MN – Twin Cities. She is now a tenured full professor in the Department of Design and has been teaching for over 18 years. She was the founding Program Director for the Master of Fine Arts in Design graduate program in the School of Art and Design and remained in this role from 2011 – 2019. She also served as Department Chair of Design from 2016-2021.
Teaching Interests: Interior design courses in lighting design, building codes, life safety standards, business practices, ethics, and senior studio capstone. MFA in Design graduate design courses in ethics, research strategies, and thesis advising and chairing.
Research Interests: Exploring sense of place, community, and emotional well-being for students and how this was affected since the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional research interests include examining the learning, motivation, expectations, engagement, and critical thinking of design students, exploring collaborative maker spaces, developing engaging teaching strategies for professional ethics, and she values integrating student research into the classroom with practices surrounding the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).
Professional Interests: Lighting design, health and wellness in design, and life safety.