Andrea, a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell. A life-long educator who also maintains a creative practice, Simitch has taught courses in architectural design, architectural representation, and furniture design. She served as Director of the Bachelor of Architecture program from 2011–14, as Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2007–08, and as Associate Dean of AAP from 2002–03. The department is consistently ranked the #1 undergraduate architecture program in the United States.

The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know, a book she co-authored with Val Warke, has been translated into six languages and serves as a required textbook in many introductory studio programs. The 2017-18 issue of Design Intelligence named Simitch one of the 25 Most Admired Educators.

Equally committed to the arts, Simitch has served as panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, as department representative for the Cornell Council for the Arts, and as a faculty collaborator with the Andrew Goldsworthy workshop at Storm King. Student work from a furniture design course co-taught with Roberto Bertoia and Milton Curry has been exhibited at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. She was a 2015 Fellow at the Baer Art Center in Hofsós Iceland where her body of work was subsequently exhibited at Cornell’s Bibliowicz Family Gallery.

Warke and she partner in a collaborative architectural practice and recent projects include the Seneca House, Nalati National Park Resort and the Eco-Tourism Strategic Planning Proposal, both for Nalati, China, as well as numerous collaborative design competitions that include the Arbedo Castione School in Ticino, Switzerland, the Center for Promotion of Science of the Republic of Serbia Competition, Benetton Competition "Designing in Teheran,” and the Stockholm City Library Competition.

She received her B.Arch. from Cornell in 1979 and also attended Occidental College and l'École Spécial d'Architecture in Paris, France.