What We Do

The Council for Interior Design Accreditation ensures a high level of quality in interior design education through three primary activities.

• Set standards for postsecondary interior design education.
  Establishing and periodically updating standards for interior design education is one of the Council’s core responsibilities. A broad constituency supports the Council’s work to set standards for education and evaluate entry-level education programs. The Council brings together representatives from professional organizations, testing, higher education, manufacturing, publishing and others with an interest in the profession’s growing body of knowledge.
• The Council exercises a well-established protocol in constructing educational standards. To assure the most relevant and up-to-date standards, data regarding not only current conditions, but also future trends affecting interior design practice, related industries, educational institutions, and accreditation practices is collected and analyzed. Thus, setting standards is a continuous cycle of monitoring, examining the important triggers for needed change, information gathering, validation, consensus building, adoption and, finally, implementation.
• Major revisions are conducted on a five- to 10-year cycle and encompass all the standards for interior design education. Limited revisions (those focused on select criteria) take place on an ongoing and as-needed basis.
• The Standards Committee, which functions as a part of the Council for Interior Design Accreditation to steward the standard-setting process, is currently initiating a major revision of the educational standards that are used to evaluate interior design programs. This revision will result in standards for interior design education effective in 2009 and beyond.


• Evaluate and accredit college and university interior design programs.
  Using internationally recognized educational standards, the Council employs a thorough three-step process to review and evaluate programs seeking accreditation.
• Self Evaluations: Programs submit a self-study evaluation conducted by the program’s faculty and administration.
• Site Visits: These three-day visits, conducted by a team of trained evaluators, allow intense evaluation of the institution’s program to confirm a program’s level of compliance with Council standards. The team then prepares a written report, with general comments and analysis, which is forwarded to the Council’s Accreditation Commission.
• Accreditation Decisions: The six-member Accreditation Commission, comprised of experienced site visitors from a cross section of the profession, all with firsthand experience regarding the complexities of accreditation, reviews the written reports. The Commission then decides to grant or deny accreditation depending on the program’s level of compliance with standards.

“The Council can take much credit for legitimizing design education and the interior design profession generally. The organization reflects the best of a professional education while always exploring future trends and best practices. It both mirrors and challenges what we do.”

—John Weigand, IDEC, IIDA
Miami University and
current Council board member

• Facilitate outreach and collaboration with all stakeholders in the interior design community.
  Consistent and continual communication with all relevant stakeholders in the interior design community guides the Council’s outreach efforts and actions, which utilize brainstorming, teamwork and consensus-building to address issues and concerns.
  
  Some of the Council’s groundbreaking outreach efforts include:
• sponsorship (along with NCIDQ) of the Future of Interior Design Roundtable, which brought together seven interdisciplinary leaders in the design field to brainstorm insights and visions into the future of interior design;
• the Firm Leader Roundtable, a panel discussion exploring current trends in interior design practice and gaps in interior design education;
• joint sponsorship with four other design associations of The Interior Design Profession’s Body of Knowledge, 2005 Update, a study established to define and document the abstract knowledge needed by practitioners to perform the profession’s work, and to initiate and sustain a dialogue among educators and interior designers about what might be needed to move the profession forward.