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IIDA Educator of the Year

Awards

The IIDA Educator of the Year award recognizes and celebrates a full-time design educator for outstanding accomplishments and commitment to interior design education.

Award Winners

  • Tilanka Chandrasekera HS EOTY
    Tilanka Chandrasekera, Oklahoma State University professor and director of the university’s Mixed Reality Lab

    Tilanka Chandrasekera, IIDA

    2025 Educator of the Year
    • Tilanka Chandrasekera, IIDA, is a professor in the Department of Design and Merchandising at Oklahoma State University (OSU) and Associate Department Head. He is also Director of the Mixed Reality Lab and holds the Christine Salmon Endowed Professorship. In his 11 years at OSU, he has received multiple awards, including three from the Council for Interior Design Accreditation. His research explores the nexus between digital media and design and has been featured in 27 peer-reviewed journal articles. Chandrasekera has secured more than $2 million in funding to fuel technology-driven approaches to design education. He developed courses on using VR and AR for social good and the ethics of AI. In 2015, he established the Mixed Reality Lab, which has helped OSU rank among the top 10 AR/VR schools in the Southwest since 2021. He also launched the Peer Teaching Mentorship Program and the Partnership for Excellence in Technology and Environmental Design. He serves on the editorial boards of Frontiers in Virtual Reality and the Journal of Interior Design.
  • Igor Siddiqui Headshot

    Igor Siddiqui, IIDA

    2022 Educator of the Year
    • Igor Siddiqui, IIDA, ASID, is the associate professor and director of the interior design program at The University of Texas at Austin, where he has served as a full-time School of Architecture faculty member since 2009. Siddiqui’s academic work—including teaching, research, and creative scholarship—contributes to the field of interiors as a body of theoretical and applied knowledge with a critical role in contemporary culture. His work has been published, exhibited, and presented internationally at a range of professional, cultural, and popular venues. He studied architecture at Yale and Tulane and is a registered architect in New York and Texas.
  • Olivier Vallerand Headshot EOTY Web 2021

    Olivier Vallerand, Assoc. IIDA, 2021 Educator of the Year

    2021
    • Olivier holds a Ph.D. in architecture from McGill University and currently works as an assistant professor at the Arizona State University. He has held academic positions at the School of Architecture and the Department of Art History in Université Laval, Québec, QC, and Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. While he currently keeps an installation-based practice, Olivier has practiced as a professional architect in various firms across the US and Canada including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Quebec. His research focuses on self-identifications, community identifications, and their relation to the design and experience of the built environment, on queer and feminist approaches to design education, and on alternative practices of design.
  • COF Ankerson

    Katherine Ankerson, FIIDA, AIA, FIDEC, 2020 Educator of the Year

    2020
    • Prior to her appointment to Dean of the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Katherine Ankerson was professor and head of the Department of Interior Architecture and Product Design at Kansas State University and had served as professor and associate dean in the UNL architecture college. She has held academic positions at Radford University and Washington State University after spending many years as a practicing architect and designer. Ankerson received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture and a Bachelor of Architecture from Washington State, in addition to a master’s degree in architecture. A strong proponent of design education, Ankerson advocates for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary engagement, the value of design and making, and embracing new technologies in addition to strengthening traditional design tools.

Important Dates

  • Applications Open

  • Applications Close

Contact

For more information, contact Cody Czmyr, Director of Member Services, at cczmyr@iida.org.

Eligibility

Current IIDA members in good standing who are current full-time educators with a minimum of five (5) years of experience in a post-secondary program of interior design education at any university or recognized school of interior design. Current International Board Members are not eligible.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to be available to travel at no cost to them, to accept the award at the IIDA Annual Meeting and Chicago Design Week in June 2026.


Apply here

Winners

The IIDA Educator of the Year will receive:

  • A $7,500 cash award and a complimentary IIDA membership
  • Complimentary IIDA membership
  • Award presentation during the 2026 IIDA Annual Meeting
  • Round-trip airfare and a one-night hotel stay in Chicago to attend the award presentation during the IIDA Annual Meeting
  • A feature on IIDA.org, Design Matters, the flagship e-newsletter of IIDA, and QUAD, the quarterly IIDA Student member e-newsletter
  • Official digital assets including logos for self-promotion
  • Coverage and mention in IIDA social media accounts, and in an official press release distributed to leading industry outlets and media partners