By Naidelly Coelho
News Editor
What is your educational and professional background?
I'm a proud graduate of Framingham State University. I graduated in 1981. Then, I went on to graduate school at Kansas State University. At both places, I studied clothing and textiles. Then after that, I worked in the fashion industry for about 20 years. Then I was fortunate in 2009 to be hired as a full-time tenure track faculty. At that time, while I was teaching I went back to school to earn my doctoral degree, and that was at UMass Lowell. So, I'm a recent doctoral degree. I recently earned a doctorate in 2018.
Did you always want to teach?
Well, it's funny. I would say yes. When I graduated from Framingham State, I was like, wait a minute, I'd like to teach, so that's when I went to get my master's degree. And then I said to be a good teacher or instructor - let's get some experience with the industry. So that's what I did. I worked for a children's wear company and a ladies' lingerie manufacturer. At that time, it was just when most of the industry was going overseas. So I worked in garment and apparel production, and things were shifting from domestic production in the United States to production in all regions of Asia. So I got some really good experience. I lived in Asia - Hong Kong and Korea - for eight years. And I was fortunate that I was able to travel all over Southeast Asia - overseeing and monitoring productions. So my area of specialization was working as a technical designer. A technical designer oversees the manufacturing process, making sure products are made to a certain standard. So I would weekly go into China and the world of Southeast Asia visiting factories.
What is your position at FSU?
So I primarily teach in the merchandising concentration. Our program is fashion design and retailing and we have a fashion design major and a merchandising major. I teach and supervise our interns. I also teach the capstone course where students develop a business and buying plan for a sustainable fashion retailer in a conceptual model and conceptual business plan, but I also teach the core courses that both our design students and merchandising students take. I teach Consumer Textiles, which is all about textile understanding, what is the textile - from fiber to yarn, to fabric, and then to finishing. That's one of the courses I regularly teach.
Can you tell me about the internship opportunity within the fashion design and retailing department?
One of the main things that I supervise is the internship in fashion merchandising. And I think the students are well prepared once they're at that senior level. We work with industries to place students. Our students are prepared to work in a range of positions as fashion merchandising graduates, and they might work in store management and operations at a retail store. They might work in a corporate office setting where they might be buying or assisting a buyer in the process of purchasing a product and might be working as an allocation analyst. And that is essentially deciding where the product goes - where it's going to sell the best and to what store locations. … Our students are commonly placed at the TJ X corporate office - we're very fortunate they're right down the road. We also place our students at New Balance, Reebok, and The Paper Store. … We have a small manufacturer that we work with called Top It Off Accessories in West Roxbury, and that's overseeing the understanding of the manufacturing of their wholesaler, so it's a different model. Students sometimes work with stylists and test stylists. … Often students are passionate about working in the retail environment, face-to-face with customers, and in any of the retail settings they are working in. Fashion, fashion promotion, visual merchandising and in visual merchandising within the store, so they're creating the displays to help sell the product. We're very proud of our internship program. Students do great work.
Do you have any advice for students?
I think the advice is just continue to do the good work that you're doing here. You've decided to come and commit to doing a degree, so come to class, and do the work - you're going to have great success. And I mean, that's the joy of my work and I think about the future at FSU. I want to continue to mentor students. So just do the work. Don't be afraid. Just keep going. You can do it and you will have great success.