Katrina Lewis
Associate Professor
Interior Architecture & Industrial Design
2104 Seaton Hall
920 N Martin Luther King Jr. Drive
Manhattan, KS 66506
T: (785) 532-5992
Katrina Lewis is an educator and designer whose career bridges interior architecture, community planning, and global engagement. She earned both her Bachelor of Interior Architecture (1998) and Master of Regional and Community Planning (2001) from Kansas State University. Since 1998, she has taught design studios at the collegiate level—first as a graduate instructor and, since 2001, as a faculty member in the Department of Interior Architecture and Industrial Design at Kansas State University. Her teaching has extended internationally to Chongqing Jianzhu University in China, Kabul University in Afghanistan, and the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh, where she shared design education as a means of cross-cultural exchange and empowerment.
In 2014, Lewis was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure. She currently serves as Director of the Environmental Design Studies Program and Director of International Programs in the College of Architecture, Planning & Design. In recognition of her exceptional teaching and mentorship, she received Kansas State University’s highest undergraduate teaching honor—the 2020 Commerce Bank and W.T. Kemper Foundation Undergraduate Outstanding Teaching Award.
Lewis’s scholarly and creative interests center on beginning design pedagogy, global education, and the intersection of design and social justice. Her work explores how design education can foster empathy, peacebuilding, and intercultural understanding. In 2012, she was named a Rotary Peace Fellow for professional studies in peace and conflict resolution at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand—an experience that continues to inform her teaching philosophy and research pursuits.
Beyond academia, Lewis finds creative expression through travel, reading, and the fiber arts, including beading and painting. Through her teaching, leadership, and creative practice, she continues to inspire students to view design as a powerful tool for connection, cultural awareness, and positive global change.