The Design Club is hosting four local professionals in an open Q&A panel at 6 p.m. Thursday in room EBS-301, where they will discuss their education and experiences.

The panel members include Interior Designer Steven Didrick, Landscape Architect Susan Van Atta and Architects Ellen Bildsten and Mark Wienke.

All four guests have extensive experience in their respective fields, and have gone on to create their own businesses based in Santa Barbara.

Steven Didrick is an employee of Susan Firestone, who has designed highly personalized hotels and residences in South America, Asia and Europe. Susan Van Atta attained a degree in environmental studies from UCSB and was involved in environmental impact assessment before becoming an architect with an eye for sustainable design and native plants.

Ellen Bildsten has designed a wide range of buildings, from large-scale commercial projects in Florida to customized residences in Santa Barbara. Former Professor at the UCSB Extension School for environmental design, Mark Wienke, designed a condominium complex that was featured in Home Building Magazine and on HGTV’s show Homes Across America.

“There is a lot of variety possible in all of these professions,” said Assistant Professor Laura Welby, the Design Club’s advisor, “which is one of the things that makes them so exciting. Not to mention that what we do we all find very exciting – to actually design the spaces where people live and work.”

The Design Club is currently accepting questions from interested students, and plans to consolidate the submitted queries before the event to reduce redundancies during the session.

“We’ll probably start off with a little biography. We’ll ask them to tell us a little bit about themselves and how they got to where they are,” said Stephen Bergen, president of the Design Club.

The areas of discussion will include which degrees should be pursued for specializations like Landscape Architecture or Interior Design in hospitality and colleges offering those. They will discuss how to go about getting a job or internship, and what kinds of skills and talents aspiring designers can utilize to get ahead.

“Maybe when they see the interest of our students,” Welby said,” they will be willing to hire more interns,” adding that “it would be to the future viability of their professions that they use their expertise to train future designers.”

The economy’s downturn has affected all areas of employment, and architecture and interior design are not exceptions. Less design work has contributed to a decrease in internships as well.

Welby and her colleagues feel that careers in architecture and interior design are reliant on internships to imbibe the hands-on skills designers need once they enter the profession. Interning provides the kind of experience a student needs to connect the classroom with a career, and can sometimes lead to a more permanent position.

“Sue Firestone, in particular, has had many of our students work with her company. She is extremely generous with internships,” Welby said, and added that she has also gone on to employ some student interns full-time.