Knowlton Landscape Architecture is dedicated to the education of future practitioners of landscape architecture. This includes: 

• Preparing students to enter the field of landscape architecture by immersing them in a rigorous, hands-on design curriculum that encourages critical design thinking that bridges conceptual and technical realms; 
• Forming clear pedagogical links between practice and research that enable students to imagine new landscapes, the systems that feed them, and the human and non-human communities that seek to thrive within them; 
• Advancing the art, science, and practice of landscape architecture for the 21st century; 
• Creating healthy, safe, and diverse learning environments that encourage students to challenge how and why our environments are being shaped, and to see design as an important tool to advocate for more inclusive, just, and resilient landscapes. 

Additionally, Knowlton Landscape Architecture is dedicated to advancing our role in the Midwest. This includes: 

• Training students to understand and value the unique cultures and ecologies of the Midwest; 
• Raising awareness about regional conditions and potentials at national and international levels 
• Contributing to the next chapter of the land-grant mission, and positioning Ohio State as the land-grant university of the 21st century. 

These goals advance the program’s mission by building on the historic strengths of the program in preparing students for design practice with professional skills supported by liberal arts instruction. Since 2017, several educational initiatives have been launched to advance and support the professional program’s broader mission. These include: 

• Strategic Hiring through the Initiative for Food and AgriCultural Transformation (InFACT) and the Race, Inclusion and Social Equity (RAISE) Initiative; 
• Midwest Landscape Lab (MidLL); 
• Transformation of the UG1 curriculum; 
• Core curricular alignments for UG2 and G1 years; 
• Transformation of the History/Theory sequence; 
• Co-Op Program; 

Fundamentally, the landscape architecture section supports the democratic mission of the land-grant university and aligns with the vision, values and goals of The Ohio State University Academic Plan. We disseminate knowledge to our students, the majority of whom are Ohio residents, and educate them about the wider world, culturally, conceptually, and physically. In turn, we project our Midwestern context outward. From the legacies of mining and commodified agriculture to endangered Midwestern flora and fauna and compromised hydrologies, our program is rooted in the core goals of the land-grant university, and our outreach efforts reinforce the university’s mission to share the academy’s expertise with the general public. 

Broadening the Landscape Architecture Co-Po Program has allowed for greater and deeper connections to professional practice. Simultaneously, the establishment of a funded travel studio ensures that all undergraduate students have off-campus educational experiences, regardless of financial strain.  Fostering a series of service-learning projects in the UG3 and UG4 years has created better connections to local communities. These studios also encourage our students to see landscape architecture as a discipline critical to addressing 21st-century concerns around social equity, climate change, health, and justice. 

We have expanded the opportunities MLA students have to develop critical understandings of practice and to pursue research with faculty.  Through graduate assistantships, MLA students develop and reinforce critical skills by teaching in the Media, Ecology/Technology, and History/Theory sequences and/or developing research skills while working closely on faculty-led projects and initiatives.  The Midwest Landscape Lab exposes all graduate students to fieldwork, introducing ways of critically seeing, reading, studying, and engaging the landscapes of the Midwest. The lab represents a key growth area for our program; targeted expansion of the lab through emerging partnerships with Airstream, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and the Wilds will further deepen our connection to the University’s land grant mission, establish a clear and recognizable platform for the section’s public-facing scholarship, and create rich and diverse experiences for our students. 

Growth and stability in the faculty has allowed the landscape architecture section to participate in larger initiatives on campus related to inclusivity, justice, and social and environmental resilience. In the past seven years, the landscape architecture faculty has taken on leadership roles relative to campus sustainability. Two faculty have chaired or co-chaired the University Senate’s Committee on the Physical Environment, one is currently serving on the University Art and Memorials Committee as well as on the Provost’s Council on the Arts, and others have served on the President and Provost’s Council on Sustainability, the campus plan for living laboratories, and the classroom master plan committee. In addition, faculty have contributed to campus stormwater advancements and created installations and visible experiments on campus that speak to agricultural sustainability, biodiversity, landscape maintenance, forestry, and new methods and materials. Such efforts support faculty teaching, research, and professional activities and align with the institution’s shared value of “Collaboration as One University.” 

The landscape architecture section’s best practices for recruiting faculty and students contributes to the university’s core goal of Teaching and Learning, “provid[ing] an unsurpassed, student-centered learning experience led by engaged, world-class faculty and enhanced by a globally diverse student body.”  We believe that diversity is a critical component to advancing scholarship and design pedagogy and are dedicated to recruiting and supporting talented faculty and students from underrepresented groups. Financial support to students through existing or newly funded initiatives (scholarships, university fellowships, graduate associateships, Office Associates Program) answers the university’s core goal of Resource Stewardship, ensuring that we “become the model for an affordable public university recognized for financial sustainability.” 

Central to educational goals is faculty retention. We have experienced exceptional stability and incremental growth since 2017. This includes: 

• Hiring of two T/T assistant professors in 2019 and 2020; 
• Promotion of three assistant professors to the rank of associate professor with tenure; 
• Promotion of one associate professor to the rank of professor;  
• No faculty turnover.

These have contributed to a positive and robust learning environment, and to a wide-ranging and collaborative research environment. This answers specifically to the university’s core goal of Research and Innovation by “creat[ing] distinctive and internationally recognized contributions to the advancement of fundamental knowledge and scholarship and to solutions of the world’s most pressing problems.” 

Since 2004, the section has been helmed by women, except in 2011-13 under interim leadership. The 2017 LAAB accreditation report recognized our program as having built the most predominantly female faculty in the nation. In 2020, a landscape architecture faculty was appointed director of the Knowlton School, marking the first appointment from the discipline of landscape architecture and the second female appointment to director. Moving forward, the faculty is working to match our gender diversity with racial and cultural diversity as well. 

In 2021, the university launched the RAISE (Race, Inclusion and Social Equity) Initiative which aims to hire 50 tenure-track faculty across the University to significantly strengthen OSU’s scholarship and leadership in these territories. In 2022, the Landscape Architecture Section partnered with the Department of the History of Art to apply for a cluster of RAISE hires, one in each unit, whose work centers on race and equity in the built environment. These faculty members will partner to create a shared GE course for the theme “Citizenship for a Just and Sustainable World.” The new faculty member, slated to join the section in Autumn of 2024, will add to the strength of the program’s scholarship on race, social and environmental justice.