My primary teaching goal is to facilitate learning about the role of evidence-based information in creating innovative design. To this end I regularly engage students outside their realm of familiarity. My method is to challenge them to design for what can be termed special populations—segments that differ from the average in society due to stage in human development, injury, disease, congenital condition, or genetic abnormalities. During Spring Semester, 2015, students learned about and developed designs for special populations including people with Parkinson's Disease, frail elderly with Nocturia, people with Degenerative Disk Disease, people with Arthritis, children with Autism, childern with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, infants learning to walk, and children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

A second goal is to incorporate community service as a learning component into each of the courses I teach. In DEA 4300, Furniture as a Social Art, students interacted with people from the larger community, representatives of the populations for which the students were designing furniture.

A third goal is to emphasize full-scale modeling for the purpose of enabling students to predict the consequences of their design decisions and to learn about construction technologies. In DEA 4300 students employed full-scale model construction to develop and illustrate their furniture designs. As an aside, it is important to note that the new Human Ecology shop is making an enormously positive difference in students' ability to construct models of their designs. Beyond the exemplary features of the facility--an effecient dust collection system, excellent natural light, and well organized and managed shop--the availability of computer driven equipment--the ShopBot, laser cutter, and 3D printer--are making a huge difference in quality of fabrication and student safety.