Ann Donar

Ann Donar (née Szeto) spent her formative years in the British colony of Hong Kong before her family moved to Canada in the 1980s. While in Hong Kong, she attended Sacred Heart Canossian College, where she was elected President of the Student Council and in the following year, Head Girl. She holds a BA in Visual Arts from York University, Toronto, where she graduated with the Dean’s Prize for Excellence, an MA and a PhD in Art Education focusing on design education from Concordia University, Montreal. Her Master’s thesis looks at the relationship between toy designs and art education and her dissertation proposes design thinking as a holistic, undergraduate curricular model. She is currently a full-time professor in the joint program of Communication, Culture, and Information Technology (CCIT) between Sheridan College and the University of Toronto Mississauga. She teaches a number of design-related courses: Design Thinking, Design and Implementation of Multimedia Documents, and History and Practice of Design. Prior to joining Sheridan, she worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario as art administrator and educator, Nortel Networks as senior graphic designer, and Piper Group as art director. She is also a Registered Graphic Designer (R.G.D.) of Ontario. Her current academic and research focus is on design thinking, futures-thinking, and art and creative direction.