Francis D.K. Ching graduated cum laude with a five-year professional degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1966. His accomplishments included instructing at Ohio University and Cornish College of the Arts, teaching as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and lecturing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was a visiting scholar at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He has been a professor of architecture at the University of Washington since 1992. Ching's published works including Architecture: Form, Space, & Order, A Visual Dictionary of Architecture, and Interior Design Illustrated, focus on clarifying and communicating architectural element,… principles, and relationships. Ching earned a Citation for Excellence in International Book Publishing in 1992, and two years later he was honored with the Graham Foundation Grant to develop a two-volume reader for Design Drawing.