Rate My Professor Kathryn Rivera

Kathryn Rivera, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Interior Design department at Seminole State College of Florida, part of the School of Engineering, Design and Construction. Her official faculty directory listing includes the professional email riverak@seminolestate.edu. She has been honored as a Ken Sylvester Faculty Excellence Honoree for the 2016-17 academic year and serves as the liaison for the College's Library committee. Rivera is recognized for her engagement in High Impact Practices, particularly experiential learning, teaching courses such as Interior Design Internship (IND 941), Senior Internship (IND 4948), and Senior Internship (IND 4949). Prior to her academic appointment, she worked professionally in the interior design industry, where she contributed to the design of a specialty school for individuals on the autism spectrum. This industry experience underpins her emphasis on universal design, highlighting how interior environments affect focus, productivity, and mental health, especially for people with disabilities including autism, sensory processing differences, blindness, or deafness.

Rivera developed the course Autism for the Built Environment (IND 2290), which provides students with hands-on opportunities to assess spaces constructed or renovated for those on the autism spectrum, identifying successful design features and potential improvements. She and her faculty colleagues invested over three years in achieving accreditation for the Interior Design program from the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) in 2018. To prepare students for professional success, Rivera organizes visits to active job sites, connecting academic instruction with real-world industry practices. She derives great satisfaction from observing student progression from initial basic line drawings to advanced, realistic renderings capable of addressing complex design problems by the end of their program. As profiled in a 2019 faculty spotlight, Rivera was pursuing her Ph.D. in architectural studies, concentrating on autism within educational settings, and articulated that interior design appealed to her for its human-centered approach to shaping everyday interior spaces where people spend much of their time.