Seyeon Lee

Biography

Seyeon Lee is a senior associate dean in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and a professor in the School of Design.

Prior to entering academia, she spent more than 14 years as an architectural and interior designer and project manager at Clifford Planning and Architecture (Hawaii) and MG2 (Seattle), building a professional portfolio spanning residential, commercial, retail, hospitality and urban planning projects in the United States, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. She is an NCIDQ-certified interior designer and a LEED Accredited Professional.

Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental design and a master’s degree in architecture from Montana State University and a Ph.D. in architecture from Texas A&M University. Her doctoral research developed instructional strategies to strengthen design education by treating cost as an integral design determinant. Building on that foundation, her current scholarship engages community architecture with an emphasis on sustainable, affordable and socially responsive design—particularly housing affordability, spatial justice and health equity in marginalized communities. From 2021 to 2023, she served as a faculty fellow at Syracuse University’s Lender Center for Social Justice.

She has authored more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, including articles in the International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology and the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, supported by external and internal research grants totaling over $250,000, including a sub-award on a MetLife Foundation Racial Wealth Gap Grant. Her work has been recognized with a 2022 AASHE Sustainability Award and has been noted for centering underrepresented voices, including refugee and immigrant women, through community-based design projects that pair rigorous scholarship with real-world impact. She has also served as a visiting scholar at Yonsei University’s College of Human Ecology in Seoul, South Korea, extending her research collaborations internationally.

In the classroom, Lee teaches core courses including Collaborative Design, Community Projects Studio, and Environmental Design Capstone Project and has led curriculum development for the school’s environmental and interior design program. In 2017, she founded the Meaningful Partnership Initiative, a collaboration between Syracuse University’s Community Projects Studio and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s construction management program in which students redesign and renovate spaces for local nonprofits; the project received the IDEC Institutional Innovation Award in 2024.

Education

• Ph.D., Texas A&M University
• M.Arch., B.E.D., Montana State University