Perry Howard, FASLA, Selected as 2007 ASLA President-elect
North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University professor seeks to maximize member resources, urging, "each one can reach one."

	Perry Howard, FASLA click here for bio

Perry Howard, FASLA, of Greensboro, North Carolina, has been selected by the ASLA membership to be president-elect of the Society. Howard is program coordinator for the landscape architecture department at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. Howard has served as the coordinator for the program since 1989, after serving as a vice president at EDSA in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Howard received his BLA from Louisiana State University and his MLA from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He has a long history of service with ASLA, serving as the Florida Chapter secretary, the North Carolina Chapter trustee, and most recently as North Carolina Chapter president.

“The election has been a very positive experience and I look forward to using all of my creative energy for the benefit of the Society,” Howard said of the election process.

Howard built much of his campaign for president-elect around a desire to boost membership numbers and get more ASLA members involved in the Society. Preaching a philosophy that “each one can reach one,” Howard said that ASLA leadership must be clear on the tasks they expect members to do, clearly identify the benefits of ASLA membership, and motivate existing members to recruit new members. Howard also expanded this philosophy to recruiting minorities into the profession of landscape architecture. “If each one of our 16,000 members reaches one minority and brings them into landscape architecture, diversity is no longer an issue,” Howard said in a speech to the ASLA Board of Trustees in early May.

In the wake of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes, one of the major issues of the campaign was how ASLA should respond to future disasters. Howard said he would lead the Society in developing a disaster response plan that would cover myriad natural disasters, and emphasize ASLA’s role in the rebuilding—rather than the recovery—phase of these events. He also said the Society must develop a roster of member volunteers with expertise in disaster recovery, and develop partnerships with allied organizations such as the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects. Howard also noted that, in the long term, ASLA should emphasize environmental education as a solution to disaster mitigation and turn the Society’s environmental education policy statement into an action item. He said ASLA must “develop and use varied educational efforts that promote an understanding of natural and managed environments with an emphasis on preventing natural disasters in the future.”

Howard also noted during the campaign that he believed ASLA should look at sustainability, disaster response, and water resources planning as part of its long-term legislative agenda. He added that the Society should frame its legislative strategy by looking at the issues that affect most Americans, the issues landscape architects are most likely to affect, and finally, which issues are of particular importance to landscape architects.

According to Survey & Ballot Systems, which coordinated this year’s election for ASLA, 4,215 of the 12,161 members eligible to vote returned ballots, for a participation rate of 34.7 percent. By comparison, 22.7 percent participated in the 2005 election. Just under half of those voting cast their ballots online, while a slim majority voted using paper ballots.