UMassGives 2022 Thank You!

The Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at UMass Amherst provides Sustainable Solutions to Complex Problems. We educate outstanding students, serve diverse communities, and undertake influential scholarship. We seek to exemplify a new generation of professionals and educators who work collaboratively across disciplines and cultures.  This provides leadership to find regenerative, equitable and beautiful designs, spatial and social practices. 

What we mean by Sustainability 

To us, sustainable means strong, resilient ecosystems that will be able to adapt to climate change.  Sustainable means healthy for people as well as animals and plants.  Sustainable reduces resources used and the flow of wastes. Sustainable means equitable and inclusive of all ages, cultures, economic and social groups, and economically stable now and in the future.  And sustainable means design and planning that creates communities and spaces that are beautiful, meaningful and engaging for the people who live in them.

We need funding for three vital initiatives this year. The first is the Garden X Graphite scholarship for retaining and recruiting students of color into our landscape architecture program. This endowment spearheaded by alumni :  Lauren Stimson, MRP and MLA ’06 and Stephen Stimson '83, has already raised over $150,000 towards this effort. We need to raise an additional $50,000 to fully fund this endowment. The second initiative is to grow the Mullin Scholarship endowment for master's of regional planning students. This fund established in honor of Professor Emeritus John Mullin has already been used to recruit and retain top students in the program. Please help us grow this fund. The third initiative is to support The Frank Waugh Alumni Board Fund, which provides ongoing support for the next generation of LARP students, including student scholarship, travel to academic and professional conferences, or to provide necessary technology to enhance the student experience.  

Finally, your general gifts are used to support our students in their technology needs, including upgrades to hardware and software programs to keep our students on the cutting-edge of the rapidly changing design and planning professions. This academic year, we extended our mini-technology grant program to assist even more students, especially those who have suffered financial loss during the pandemic. We plan on continuing this program as well as expanding our professional development opportunities for students to attend and present their creative and professional work at conferences. 

By making a gift, you will provide vital support to our students by funding scholarships, life-changing internships, and research experiences—which prepare students for the job market; or help students present their research and creative work at conferences and pursue other professional development opportunities.