NYSID’s Introduction to Interior Design Course Helped These Moms Find a Path to a Second Career
Career changers Leslie Adato (AAS) and Lucy Yang (BID to AAS) started their journeys at NYSID with the six-week Introduction to Interior Design course, through NYSID’s Institute for Continuing and Professional Studies. A new cycle of Introduction to Interior Design courses begins the week of September 9. NYSID offers sections of Introduction to Interior Design on multiple days of the week, with both online and onsite options available.
Leslie Adato
Lucy Yang
Leslie Adato, 49, and Lucy Yang, 41, both students in NYSID’s Associate of Applied Science in Interior Design program, chatted over chai lattes in a cafe in Montclair, New Jersey, this August. Last year, the two design students discovered that several local parents are commuting to NYSID from the New Jersey suburbs of Montclair and Glen Ridge, and they founded a casual “brunch group” of NYSID students that’s all about supporting each others’ interest in design. The group of NYSID friends does everything from helping each other with assignments, to taking “field trips” to destinations like the Kips’ Bay Decorator Showhouse and Lyndhurst Mansion together.
Adato is the mother of two teens and a tween. She had a successful career in marketing for arts nonprofits, and worked in various roles at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, and Stanford University, before making a move to Virginia for her husband’s job and taking off work for a few years to care for her children. She decided to apply for marketing jobs again in 2020, just as the pandemic hit and foiled her plans. So, she turned the lockdown into an opportunity to reinvent herself. “I have always wanted to be a designer, but it seemed like a leap into a far-fetched dream,” she recalls. “After some research, I came across an article in Architectural Digest that listed NYSID as one of the best interior design schools in the nation, and I found out that I could take the Introduction to Interior Design course remotely, from where I was living in Virginia (in 2021). I realized, after taking this course, that pursuing interior design was a viable option for me and that I now had a track to do it.”
In 2020, Yang was the owner of a growing online tea company and mother of two very young children when the pandemic interrupted her supply chain from China, resulting in the decimation of her hard-won business. She went through a period of mourning for her company, before finding a way to pivot. She says, “I did the Artist’s Way program with friends. It cleared my head and helped me claim my identity as an artist. At the same time, I was working on the design of our home in Montclair, and it all came together to show me art, architecture, and design are what I’m most passionate about.” Yang also began her NYSID journey with the Introduction to Interior Design course (in 2022). She says, “It confirmed my love for interior design, and it made me want to study more.”
Floral rendering of wallpaper by Lucy Yang
Understand What Interior Design Is Before You Dive In
“Before taking Introduction to Interior Design, I was naive about what interior design really is,” remembers Adato. “Through the course, I learned about traffic circulation, architectural scale, drawing in scale, putting together a mood board, and drawing elevations and floor plans to scale. It’s a legitimately rigorous course that gives you a really good sense of the pace and the difficulty of the actual classes at NYSID.” The Intro. courses are taught by practicing designers, faculty members who also teach in NYSIDs degree programs.
Yang adds, “It’s necessary for everyone to get a sense of what interior design is before they dive in. This course provides that.” She remembers when she was doing some decorating projects for friends in 2020, many told her she has such a strong aesthetic that she didn’t need an education in design. She disagreed. “Interior Design is so much more than decorating,” Yang says. “There is methodology and technique beneath the art form. You need to understand the relevance of design history, color theory, visual balance, and proportion. If you are designing without any education, you are designing by trial and error.”
Pencil renderings by Leslie Adato
Stackable Programs Designed for Career Changers and Working Parents
At NYSID, the Introduction to Interior Design class can be the gateway for the one-year Basic Interior Design Certificate (BID), the two-year Associate in Applied Science in Interior Design (AAS), and ultimately the four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design (BFA). Credits earned for the BID certificate can be applied to the AAS, and the BFA, if the student decides to pursue successively higher credentials.
Both Adato and Yang started in Introduction to Interior Design, and went on to get the BID. Adato matriculated into the AAS degree program in the fall of 2023 and Yang will matriculate into the AAS program in September 2024. Adato has already landed a coveted design internship at RR Interiors NYC, so she will need to work, study, commute from NJ, and co-parent her three children in the fall, but she is accustomed to multitasking. Says Adato, “What’s special about NYSID is you can go at your own pace. You can take as few courses as you want a semester, or take a full load (in the undergraduate programs). There are options to take the undergraduate programs entirely online, or in a combination of online and in-person. For career changers and parents, this flexibility is everything.”
This fall, beginning the week of September 9, NYSID is offering sections of in-person Introduction to Interior Design at the East 70th Street campus, asynchronous online sections that allow students to work on their own schedule, and synchronous online sections taught in real time with an instructor and peers on Zoom. The courses are six sessions. Review all of the course options on the ICPS website, or for a quick reference:
Lucy Yang, Alona Dadiani, Jamie Smith, Julieta Alvarez, and Leslie Adato
Peers Are Powerful Motivators
Among the things Adato and Yang value about NYSID are the encouraging peers and the intimate culture. They even connected to NYSID students and alumni in their suburb of Montclair and surrounding towns. Their loose “brunch group” also consists of students Alona Dadiani and Jamie Smith, and NYSID alumna Julieta Alvarez, an accomplished designer who has been a mentor to Yang. Says Adato, “Going to school with so many career changers connects you to peers who are as focused and passionate about design as you are. Making a career change can be intimidating, but taking classes with so many others makes for a supportive environment.”