More recently, Tsu took the job of co-curator of the current international exhibit Costume Design at the Turn of the Century: 1990-2015, which opened at the Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow in June of 2015 and later toured to the US and China.

Tsu holds both a BFA and MFA from CMU, where she now teaches as the Bessie F. Anathan Professor of Costume Design. She previously headed the costume programs at Boston University (1983 to 1991) and the University of Texas at Austin (1991 to 2003).

"I work very hard because I tell myself what I do might be helpful for a large community not just myself. So actually my teaching work allows it to happen more than my design work. Also they both inform each other," Tsu said.

Cumulatively, Tsu has taught 96 MFA costume designers and hundreds of undergraduate designers that would go into the profession.

Today, with more and more young Chinese students coming to the US to embrace higher education, the program Tsu teaches enrolled 16 Asian students from overseas.

"The educational system in both countries is very strong but very different, for instance, my students who come from China are fantastically disciplined, the top of their classes, they are very diligent and they paint beautifully and even are able to mimic a variety of different kinds of artists and their painting styles," Tsu said.

"But because they are so diligent, because they've been trained the Chinese way to be very polite, to listen carefully, the harder thing for them to understand is that we want to hear how they feel about the issues of the world, we want to know how they really feel on the inside," Tsu said.

"As educators, we have an enormous responsibility. We form the future of our own field by training tomorrow's theater artists. We teach technique, process, and skills but do we adequately address the cultures and theater of the world and within our country? So many voices and visions in the cultural richness of the United States have yet to find expression," said Tsu.