My philosophy is to design for good. Throughout my time in the arts, I have been drawn to social design as a means of combining personal ethics with creativity; focusing on the person, rather than the ‘user’. My thesis narrows down this service-based approach to focus on the needs of educators, a typically underrepresented yet overworked group. Their job is often made even harder by ineffective, inefficient, and unsympathetic design centered around the perceived needs of the student, at the expense of the teacher.

This passion led me to the Alliance for Catholic Education, a graduate program centered on serving those most vulnerable through its focus on virtue-based education. My work with ACE as an intern and future educator has enlivened this zeal within me and inspired me to combine design and service for my thesis focus. In my research, I observed how much time, effort, and resources teachers constantly put into developing lesson plans. Through a centralized and organized lesson plan sharing system, Collab minimizes the struggles teachers may face when preparing for their students and promotes quality education by fostering collaboration, cultivating a community of diverse thinking and teaching styles.