Interior design, like other applied disciplines, has a clear career cycle requiring education and professional experience before becoming eligible for examination. Internships are often encouraged in academic curriculums for increased career placement and enhancement of student learning outcomes; they also serve as a benchmark for academic programs to evaluate their curriculum and its relevance to practice. As the design industry rapidly shifts the scope and needs in projects, it becomes more difficult for academic programs to assess practitioners' values as they relate to recent interns and entry‐level hires. Using a social constructivist approach, this longitudinal study aims to better understand practitioners' perceptions of soft and hard skill sets necessary for emerging interior design professionals. This study utilizes content analysis to evaluate practitioners' responses (N = 260) from 2006 to 2014 through a survey questionnaire that consisted of open‐ended questions aimed to evaluate senior‐level interior design students' performance during the required 400‐hour internship at a mid‐sized Southeastern university. The findings showed that soft skills were more often listed as positive attributes where interns performed exceedingly well. Furthermore, soft skills affected the willingness of practitioners to hire interns.

The importance of sustainable design and building practices has been well documented in recent literature by Stieg (2006), and as the emphasis on this type of design and construction continues to grow, institutions of higher education are increasingly integrating sustainable design into their curriculum. Congruent with this movement has been the growing realization that interior designers must be able to work and collaborate with a diverse and multifaceted workforce, particularly when sustainable design is a goal. Therefore, using a social constructivist approach this study sought to (1) measure the differences in attitudes toward sustainable design and collaborative learning between lowerand upper-division undergraduate students majoring in interior design at a Southeastern university, (2) investigate the potential impact of interior design education on attitudes toward sustainable design and collaborative learning among the sample, and (3) assess a potential relationship among the variables. Since the interior design program examined for this study incorporates increasing levels of sustainable design education and collaborative learning as students progress through the curriculum, the authors sought to determine whether upper-division students would display more favorable attitudes toward these competencies, which are so highly desired for the workforce. Results revealed that upper-division students held more positive attitudes toward sustainable design than lowerdivision students and provided support for a relationship between the two variables. However, contrary to expectations, results also revealed that upper-division students held less favorable attitudes toward collaborative learning than their lower-division peers. Educational implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This study examined how student learning can be enhanced through a multidisciplinary collaborative project in the apparel merchandising and interior design curriculum. It investigated the relationships among students' perceptions (the importance of collaboration in the industry, course connections across disciplines, and cultural understanding), learning outcomes (social, cognitive, and emotional), attitude toward the collaborative project, and intent to register for future collaborative courses in pre- (N=56) and post-tests (N=52). The data was collected from students who enrolled in Global Retailing, Visual Merchandising, or Interior Design. In both tests, perceived importance of collaboration significantly influenced social/cognitive and emotional learning outcomes and attitude. Learning outcomes significantly affected attitude. Compared to social/cognitive learning outcomes, emotional learning outcomes was a stronger predictor of attitude in both tests, showing a pivotal role of emotional learning in creating positive attitudes toward the collaborative project. Attitude significantly increased intent to register for future collaborative courses in both tests.

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