20 Faculty Updates

Our faculty are one of the greatest strengths of our program. Check out some brief highlights of what they’ve been up to this year!

David Anderson continues to coordinate the curriculum for our robust LAEP 1030 (Introduction to Landscape Architecture) course. In the 2022-23 academic year, over 1,000 students enrolled in the course. Dave also co-taught the Senior Capstone studio and was very involved in this year’s Great Salt Lake Charrette. In correlation with our work with USU’s Quinney Institute of Land, Water, and Air and the Vice President for Research, Dave was invited to present at Research Landscapes lecture series on the charrette process (The Charrette Process: Working Together to Build Strong Utah Communities).

Brent Chamberlain published articles this year on Artificial Intelligence within landscape architecture, along with colleagues Benjamin George and Ph.D. Candidate Phillip Fernberg. One of the articles was part of a Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Special Issue and another received the top paper award at the international Digital Landscape Architecture Conference. He was honored to receive the Excellence in Research or Creative Work (Junior) Award from CELA and was this year’s College of Agricultural and Applied Sciences Researcher of the Year.

Keith Christensen continues to serve as LAEP’s Department Head. This past year, in addition to all the paperwork that involves, and teaching thesis methods and grading and drainage, he continued to lead a major research effort to better understand and advocate for the role of the built environment in supporting individuals with disabilities’ community living and participation. Keith is also participating in the NSF research project exploring automating transportation affordances for people living with disabilities using machine learning. During Spring semester Keith led LAEP’s successful accreditation review effort, and he and Professor Sean Michael took students to coastal communities in Louisiana and Texas as part of the “2023 Crawfish Tour; puttin’ the LA in LAEP” student travel experience.

David Evans was pleased to re-introduce our face-to-face introductory graphics course. These core hand graphic skills remain the foundation of student graphic and design evolution, and it was exciting to bring back this essential class to studio. He also taught Site Analysis II, where the Annual Dean’s Prize competition addressed The Other Side Village in SLC. Ten student teams worked on a master-planned neighborhood that provides affordable and permanent housing, developed a pedestrian circulation system, park and open space concepts, a chapel and memorial garden vision and streetscape plans. This studio also enjoyed an all-day field trip, where they visited an array of professional offices and toured a project site under construction.

Benjamin George collaborated with Dr. Brent Chamberlain and doctoral student Phil Fernburg on a research article about the impact of AI in landscape architecture design which received the Award for Scientific Excellence from the Digital Landscape Architecture Conference in Germany. Dr. George has also been working with Department Head Keith Christensen to obtain approval for new degree offerings in Digital Modeling and Visualization, which will prepare student to contribute to a variety of fields through the development and use of advanced visualization technologies.

Daniella Hirschfeld published one paper this year and has two that are in peer review. Published Nature - Communications Earth & Environment, the paper titled “Global survey shows planners use widely varying sea-level rise projections for coastal adaptation” presents interesting findings from 49 different countries. She is also expanding her work on Extreme Heat with two funded projects - One is with NOAA and will look at extreme heat in Salt Lake City, the other is through ASLA and will look at landscape design solutions to extreme heat threats.

Todd Johnson The 2022/23 LAEP year was full of challenge and pleasant surprises, most notably three of our UREC Teams placing first, second and third with their development submittals in Salt Lake City. That is a sweep, with our undergrads and graduate student Addison Martin, putting together strong urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, and business plans for creative solutions – one urban housing, one campus housing, and one suburban mixed use scheme. The most astounding challenge was taking the year to figure out in all studios how to address climate change and the disappearing Great Salt Lake. Our students are learning to participate in “planet survival” they can be…if they so choose.

Caroline Lavoie, MLA, MPL, CSLA, professor in LAEP, led a successful urban design studio in Idaho Falls, collaborating with the Community Development Services of Idaho Falls and LAEP alum (Brian Stevens). Caroline also has a current exhibition at the Livingston Depot Museum in Montana from May 20 - June 9, 2023. The exhibition, “Crossing Borders: The Landscapes and Communities of Highway 89,” highlights her experience driving along Highway 89 from Mexico to Canada and contains her drawings, photographs, and film.

Carlos Licon taught the undergraduate studio in land planning for residential design and a graduate studio in environmental planning. The undergraduate studio focused on local housing development projects in south Cache Valley, and the graduate studio developed a planning tool to understand the connection between water and land uses in the Great Salt Lake watershed. His research continues in planning for sustainable development and resilience. Carlos also participates with the interdisciplinary team working on disability policy.

Sean Michael PhD, FCELA, was voted in as Secretary/Treasurer of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture’s Academy of Fellows, and reappointed to the Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee for Utah’s Division of Outdoor Recreation. His teaching of Foundations in Business Practice in Landscape Architecture led to an analysis of trends in ‘professional practice’ course across North America, and is assisting LAEP students with career readiness, including conducting case studies of firms, and improved job negotiations. To understand the confluence of landscape and recreation in post-COVID America, he explored the Baja Peninsula of Mexico for 5 weeks, organizing a panel of the region’s experts in adventure travel at Overland Expo, the largest event of its kind in the world. He is currently developing a new certificate program in Design Entrepreneurship, which will serve all design students at Utah State.

Jake Powell has enjoyed opportunities to utilize his LAEP Extension position to bridge the great work of the department with the larger profession, communities, and people of Utah. As President of the Utah Chapter of the ASLA he had the “opportunity” to engage in arguing against a legislative proposal within the state of Utah intent on eliminating the Landscape Architecture Licensing Board, which he feels weakens the rigor of licensure in Utah. This spring he also launched two workshops to help people engage in the process of design. Participants learned to analyze their site, develop a program, explore functional relationships, and develop a water wise landscape design. There was also a week-long workshop held in Moab, Utah in partnership with the USU Permaculture Initiative. These workshops were another chance to share the power of landscape architecture to improve people’s lives.

Ole Sleipness enjoyed a productive year, teaching the Recreation Design and Open Space Planning studio, Landscape Materials, and Landscape Graphics courses. In addition to publishing several journal articles and conference presentations, he was awarded a grant through NSF for research on planning and design considerations for electric vehicle charging stations during the coming year.

Huaqing Wang has achieved significant milestones in her academic and research endeavors. Firstly, she successfully published a paper titled “Emergency department visits for mental disorders and the built environment: Residential greenspace and historical redlining” in the prestigious journal Landscape and Urban Planning, which holds the #1 rank in the field of urban studies. Additionally, she was honored to receive the Best Poster Award from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, an international community of landscape architecture educators. Furthermore, she secured a seed grant from the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station for a project focused on automating image classification and accuracy assessment processes. These accomplishments demonstrate her dedication to advancing knowledge in urban studies, landscape architecture, and data-driven research methodologies.