Darci Pappano has over 15 years of experience teaching Interior Design and Interior Architecture at Florida International University. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate level design studios in Formative, Workplace, Hospitality, and Spa + Wellness. She teaches additional coursework in Color Theory, Materials for Interior Architecture, and Fundamentals of Cruise Ship and Yacht Design. Darci employs exploratory exercises to encourage her students to embrace their own unique ways of seeing and developing design solutions followed by rigorous programming, wayfinding, and material studies, with intensive graphic presentation design standards.

Darci is the Director of the FIU Cruise Ship and Super Yacht program [CSSY]: a specialized graduate certificate program for second year Interior Architecture students. She has developed a program that includes two semesters of specialized curriculum on Cruise Ship Interior Design and Super Yacht Interior Design. Both semesters feature study abroad components: Design at Sea, a series of analysis and design exercises aboard a cruise ship; and CSSY in Italy, an international exchange program with the University of Genoa Naval Design Program including visits to shipyards, yacht-building facilities, and iconic interior design destinations in Europe.

Darci is the founding Co-Director of the FIU+Bauhaus Workshop interdisciplinary study abroad program. Over the past five years she has developed a curriculum leading FIU students through a series of exercises that parallel the historic Bauhaus Vorkurs while studying at the UNESCO World Heritage campus in Dessau, Germany. She and her co-director have received a competitive grant from the German government supporting student travel. She co-authored a self-published book highlighting the curricular innovations of the FIU+Bauhaus Workshop that launched in conjunction with an exhibition and panel discussion during Art Basel in 2019.