Jinseup (Ted) Shin

Jinseup “Ted” Shin, MFA, is a professor the Department of Industrial Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include technology, product design, and future trends. Shin teaches Introduction to Industrial Design, Technical Drawing, and Digital Visual Techniques in ID and oversees student internships.

Before teaching at MSU Denver, he taught as an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, for five years. Shin also worked for Samsung Electronics in South Korea for seven years, where he designed various products including Samsung’s first clamshell-type cellphone. He was one of 12 from over 700 Samsung designers to be placed in a special design program at the company, which allowed him to travel to many countries and study how different cultures impact design solutions.

Shin is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America and co-authored an IDSA publication titled “Design Like a Chef,” in which he compares the complex roles of chefs and designers. Additionally, he is actively working with companies as a professional design consultant.

Shin received his master’s in Industrial and Product Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001 and a bachelor’s in Industrial and Product Design from the Yeungnam University in South Korea in 1993.

Scott Mourer

Scott Mourer, M.F.A., is an affiliate professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Amy Kern

Amy Kern, MID, is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her areas of expertise include industrial design, human-centered design, design thinking and design research. Kern currently teaches Introduction to Industrial Design.

Prior to joining MSU Denver in 2014, her work included being a senior product designer, furniture and lighting designer and director of product design. In 2012, Kern launched her design consultancy, AK Magma Design, where she still works as the founder and director of design. Her extensive experience, specializing in furniture and spatial and lighting design, includes work with factories around the world and major corporate retailers and custom designs for restaurants, lounges, hotels and casinos.

Kern’s research areas include globalization, ethnography, humanitarian design and universal design. Her current projects are being completed at her consultancy, focusing on balancing humanitarian and universal design projects with projects using expertise in the business of product design and manufacturing. She is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America.

Kern received her Master of Industrial Design degree from Pratt Institute in New York in 2002 and her bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1994. She also holds a special certification in Design Thinking.

Lisa Abendroth

Lisa M. Abendroth is a professor in the Communication Design program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She led the program as coordinator from 2000 to 2018. Her research focuses on public interest design and the social, economic, and environmental impacts created with, and within, the contexts of underserved people, places, and problems. Her pedagogy is committed to community-centered design practices that embolden access and equity.

Abendroth is a SEED Network cofounder, a SEED Evaluator coauthor, and a recipient of the SEED Award for Leadership in Public Interest Design. She is also a contributor to the Public Interest Design Institute. Abendroth is a coeditor of two books in Routledge’s Public Interest Design Guidebook series: Public Interest Design Practice Guidebook: SEED Methodology, Case Studies, and Critical Issues, published in 2015; and, Public Interest Design Education Guidebook: Curricula, Strategies, and SEED Academic Case Studies, published in 2018.

She has earned degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Abendroth lectures, curates, exhibits and publishes her work nationally and internationally. She was named a 2019 AIGA Fellow.

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