Industrial Design Graduate named 2016 IDSA Young Educator of the Year

John McCabe, a 2006 graduate of the Master of Industrial Design Program in the School of Industrial + Graphic Design, received the 2016 Industrial Designers Society of American Young Educator of the Year Award at the IDSA International Conference in Detroit, MI in August. McCabe is the Service design and design for sustainability program coordinator at the Savannah School of Art and Design and is Director and Co-founder of SHIFT Design Camp in Tuscumbia, AL. “Whether in or out of the classroom, John is an inspiration to the next generation of designers,“ said Scott Shim, IDSA Board of Education VP and ID professor at the University of Notre Dame.

The Young Educator of the Year Award is “presented in recognition of the contributions of younger faculty who have made the choice to dedicate their careers primarily to the education of the next generation of designers.” This year is the third time in the last six years that an Auburn industrial design alumnus has been named IDSA Young Educator of the Year. McCabe joins other industrial design graduates who have been honored: Jerrod Windham (BID ’00, MID ’07) in 2010; Benjamin Bush (BID ’08, MID ’10) for 2013. Also among industrial design graduates recognized by IDSA is Owen Foster, MID ’05, who is Chair of Industrial Design at SCAD and also a Director and Co-Founder of SHIFT Design Camp. He received IDSA’s Education Award in 2015.

Auburn University’s industrial design program is one of the oldest industrial design programs in the nation and the only NASAD-accredited program in Alabama. Both its graduate and undergraduate programs have been ranked in the top ten over the last ten years by DesignIntelligence in its annual survey, “America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools.”