Archives: Faculties

Dr. Sheila Bosch is an associate professor and graduate coordinator for the Department of Interior Design. For more than two decades, Sheila has been engaged in research exploring the relationships between environmental design and human well-being, primarily in healthcare and educational environments. Healthcare design research has investigated environments serving patients of all ages, from birth to the very end of life, including intensive care units, medical-surgical units, emergency departments, behavioral health units and skilled nursing facilities. In 2014, Sheila was honored to receive the national-level HCD10 top researcher award for her contributions to healthcare design research. Her current research focuses on how the design of healthcare spaces may help reduce stress and support mindfulness among healthcare workers. Research on learning environment design has included investigations in both K-12 and higher education environments, including an externally funded investigation of mixed-use learning environments at the university level. Sheila teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses, all of which include a research component. For undergraduates, she regularly team-teaches a senior design studio in which students develop innovative healthcare spaces, oftentimes working with design practitioners. Sheila also teaches both undergraduate and graduate level environment-behavior courses where students explore the complex relationships between the environment (built or natural) and the people who occupy those environments. Other graduate courses taught include Readings in Design Studies and Research Methods in Interior Design. Prior to UF, Sheila served as the Director of Research for Gresham Smith, a global design firm headquartered in the southeastern US. Having earned her PhD in 2004 from Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture, Sheila also hold an MS (life science, environmental toxicology) and a BS (science education), both from the University of Tennessee.

In the College of Design, Construction and Planning, Margaret Portillo, Professor of Interior Design, is serving as Associate Dean for Research + Strategic Initiatives. As a researcher, she leverages mixed methods, to explore human-centered design innovation.  Recently, she was a co-recipient of an EDRA Research Excellence commendation on mixed-use learning zone spaces and typologies, a study, funded by ASID. This national award recognized the study’s translational significance and practice impact.  Currently, she is collaborating on a study examining design transformation within university library, part of a larger Association of College and Research Libraries initiative. Through books, articles, and essays as well as academic and industry-invited presentations, her work has been shared nationally and internationally.  Portillo also is committed to high impact scholarly service. For example, she chaired the CIDA standards development project that involved an extensive three-year process of exploring, evaluating, and testing societal influences that informed a major revision of international interior design accreditation standards.  Portillo served two as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interior Design (2006-2015), published under the auspices of IDEC, successfully moving to a quarterly publication schedule and a revisioning of the journal’s focus, reach, and readership that appreciably elevated the journal’s ranking.

In addition to advising MID and PhD students, Portillo developed a course on design innovation and also has taught applied color theory and environment and behavior at the undergraduate level.  Portillo also created a graduate seminars on creativity seminar and has taught research methods.  She regularly participates in studio reviews and gives guest lectures. Representing design education, IIDA invited her to jury for the IIDA MidAmerica and InWards competitions, in Kansas City and Seattle respectively.