Vision
Washington State University Landscape Architecture responds to the climate emergency through advancing design education, research, and practices that foster ecological consciousness, promote social justice, inspire ingenuity, and engage with the promise and limits of the 21st century.
Mission
The Landscape Architecture Program at Washington State University is committed to the land grant tradition of connecting to and serving society. The program’s mission is grounded by three multifaceted and interrelated components:
- Generate landscape architectural knowledge through place-based, community-driven, and action-based design and research
- Extend landscape architectural knowledge in diverse settings to deepen awareness of the relationships among design, complex systems, and substantive environmental issues
- Apply landscape architectural knowledge to address local and global challenges and advocate for planetary wellbeing
Values
- Design Thinking:
We establish the design process as a holistic method for creatively addressing complex issues. - Resilience:
We foster design that responds and adapts to the dynamics of physical, biological, and social systems - Systems thinking:
We embrace understanding the interconnectedness and balance among multiple systems - Empathy:
We cultivate compassion and affection for living systems - Collaboration:
We are committed to team and interdisciplinary approaches to learning and research - Imagination:
We encourage wonder, awe, and fun to engage and discover possibilities - Place-based and Globally Aware:
We engage our unique bioregion in teaching and research as a way to consider the complex web of relationships among diverse systems, locally and globally - Beauty:
We embrace beauty as necessity and as a reflection of healthy systems - Diversity:
We value multiple perspectives and experiences - Stewardship, Responsibility, Action:
We are dedicated to service learning, action research, and sustainable and restorative practices - Community:
We cherish and respect the wisdom, values and needs of those we serve and work to facilitate reciprocity between people and places
Goals
- Provide students with a professional design education and transformative learning experiences
- Promote critical understanding and interpretation of complex systems, especially in the context of the climate change
- Forward a culture of civic engagement and design leadership
- Foster practices that lead to social justice, especially in the context of the built environment
- Cultivate reciprocal relationships with the indigenous peoples of the Columbia River and Salish Sea Basins
- Engage technology as a thinking and learning tool
- Build relationships with industry professionals
- Attract diverse students and facilitate student success
- Further landscape architecture awareness through research and outreach
- Support faculty development and strengths
Objectives
Objectives for Goal 1: Provide students with a professional design education and transformative learning experiences
- Prepare students to function as entry level practitioners of landscape architecture
- Provide students with opportunities for interdisciplinary learning
- Sustain collaborative experiences that connect students to local and regional communities
- Provide opportunities for experiential learning and travel
- Promote understanding and integration of diverse bodies of knowledge
- Facilitate student engagement in high-impact learning experiences that reveal the diverse applications of landscape architecture
Objectives for Goal 2: Promote critical understanding and interpretation of complex systems, especially in the context of the climate change
- Further lateral thinking skills within students and the application of those skills to resolving complex ecological, social, and aesthetic problems within the scope of environmental planning and design
- Build an understanding of how healthy social systems depend upon, and are intertwined with healthy economies and ecosystems
- Expand students’ awareness of the relationships among urban, rural, and wilderness contexts
- Cultivate students’ abilities to read landscapes through multiple lenses and to reflect upon these landscapes through diverse forms of expression
Objectives for Goal 3: Forward a culture of civic engagement and design leadership
- Provide students with a diverse and integrated set of educational experiences that inspire, stimulate, and nurture life-long learning
- Foster in students a sense of responsibility related to ecological, social, aesthetic and design issues to make valuable contributions to a changing profession, society, and global environment
- Use course and extracurricular projects to encourage students to become engaged citizens and leaders who advance the quality of the built and natural environment and ultimately the betterment of the human condition
- Prepare students to embrace stewardship and leadership roles in the future
Objectives for Goal 4: Foster practices that lead to social justice, especially in the context of the built environment
- Incentivize engaged scholarship activities that are driven by justice issues
- Use design courses for service learning that addresses the interrelated issues of race, poverty, and the built environment
- Model design -via required courses and scholarship- as a form of social advocacy
- Recruit and hire faculty committed to social justice
- Recruit and hire faculty from underrepresented populations
- Collaborate and network with other units in the WSU system that are dedicated to social justice
Objectives for Goal 5: Cultivate reciprocal relationships with the indigenous peoples of the Columbia River and Salish Sea Basins
- Build upon existing relationships with sovereign nations and tribal bands
- Forge research collaborations with sovereign nations and tribal bands
- Seek out service learning opportunities that involve issues relevant to indigenous peoples
- Integrate tribal perspectives into studio investigations through direct engagement with tribal members
- Work with WSU’s Native American Programs to strengthen existing relationships and create new ones
Objectives for Goal 6: Engage technology as a thinking and learning tool
- Create learning environments that allow students to use technology to observe, understand, ideate, and communicate
- Apply pedagogical methodologies that embrace technology as a gateway for critical thinking and technical skill building
- Initiate conversations -among students, industry, faculty- about the ramifications of using different technologies, especially as they pertain to helping students develop a growth mindset
Objectives or Goal 7: Build relationships with industry professionals
- Sustain engagement with WASLA and ASLA
- Use the program’s semester newsletter and social media to connect with alumni and practitioners
- Strengthen existing relationships with practitioners via studio visits, design reviews and lecture invitations, job shadows, and mentorships
- Continue developing initiatives with the LA Professional Advisory Board (LAPAB)
- Encourage students to choose the 4th year, fall internship option
Objectives for Goal 8: Attract diverse students and facilitate student success
- Increase visits with undecided majors at WSU, high schools, community colleges, and other appropriate venues
- Develop stronger outreach and recruitment for underrepresented students
- Develop additional articulation agreements with community colleges
- Increase financial support to students through scholarships
- Provide diverse mentorship opportunities for students Objectives for
Goal 9: Further landscape architecture awareness through research and outreach
- Share knowledge and resources to increase recognition of and respect for the profession of landscape architecture locally, regionally, nationally, and globally
- Increase the awareness and understanding of landscape architecture in high schools and community colleges
- Participate in local, state, and national organizations
- Share landscape architecture news with diverse media outlets Objectives for
Goal 10: Support faculty development and strengths
- Encourage faculty publication and presentation of scholarly work and pedagogical innovations in a variety of venues and media
- Identify support mechanisms that allow interchange among teaching, practice, and scholarship
- Continue to augment faculty travel and costs for attending conferences
- Support creative scholarly outputs
- Develop and support research frameworks that allow faculty to collaborate on multidisciplinary projects
- Encourage and support faculty-student research partnerships
Strategic Plan Review and Evaluation Procedures
The LA Strategic Plan is reviewed, evaluated and revised accordingly every 5 years. The five year review period is structured to overlap with the strategic plan reviews of the school, college, and university.
Review takes place during the annual program retreat in which faculty critically discuss the relevancy and accuracy of the program’s vision and mission as it relates to those of the School, College, and University, as well as how if the vision and mission align with societal needs and the state of the profession and practice.
The goals and objectives are discussed one-by-one and modified collectively, in real time. When the strategic plan content shifts, faculty identify potential initiatives and tactics for achieving our revised mission, goals, and objectives, along with evidence and metrics that can demonstrate success.