Chris Jordan received a Bachelor of Environmental Design/Product Design degree from the College of Design in 1975. He worked the next 10 years building appearance models and prototypes of IBM hardware for Design Dimension Inc.

Jordan spent the following seven years as a museum exhibit designer for the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources before starting the business Exhibitry to design and build museum cases, artifact mounts and furniture. He returned to the College of Design in August 1996 as the Director of the Materials Lab. Upon completing a master’s degree in Industrial Design in 2001, Jordan has begun teaching the ID 255 and 256 materials and processes classes along with the DF 102 labs.