By Torey Carter-Conneen

One of the things that energizes me is meeting members of our ASLA family. Connection and relationship building is such a powerful and important human interaction and whether it’s touring a project, meeting with students or sharing ASLA’s work, I have found that the exchange of ideas makes our collective work better. From these gatherings (at least) two things happen: 1. I gather feedback and input that helps evolve ASLA’s work and 2. folks in our profession see the value and have a higher sense of purpose for ASLA’s work.

I recently traveled to Ithaca, New York where I visited Cornell University and met with two firms. First, for all of our Cornell Alums–I just can’t get over how beautiful the campus is. One of the jewels of the campus is The Gorge which is a heavily wooded area that divides student housing from academic buildings–meaning that students are surrounded by nature both at the start and end of their day. I think that must be very grounding.

My host for the visit was Michele Palmer, RLA, ASLA, LEED GA, Senior Associate at Whitham Planning Design Landscape Architecture PLLC and ASLA Board Trustee. We met with Kimberly Michaels, RLA, ASLA, LEED, Principal and Director of Landscape Architecture at Trowbridge Wolf Michaels who gave me a tour of a downtown plaza and community space the firm designed. It’s also worth noting here that her firm is working on the I-81 corridor project in downtown Syracuse which will reconnect parts of the city.

At Cornell, I met Joshua Cerra, Department Chair, Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture, Maria Goula, Director of Graduate Studies, Professor, Landscape Architecture, and Jennifer Birkeland, Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture

We talked a lot about ASLA doing more research grants like the extreme heat and biodiversity research grants we have open now.


ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen presenting the Climate Action Plan

To an audience of Cornell students, faculty and our area ASLA chapter members, I gave a presentation about the ASLA Climate Action Plan. The students were very enthusiastic and engaged with the field guide and asked good questions about international collaboration. David Cutter, University Landscape Architect joined the discussion and he suggested that the students take the campus sustainability plan and compare it to the ASLA climate action plan and see where there are opportunities to make more progress on campus.

I had breakfast with graduate student chapter president Ben Jensen who I first met at LaBash last year, and undergraduate chapter president, Emma Uzgiris. Emma said the undergraduate chapter is planning to participate in Earth Day activities in April.


ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Conneen joining Cornell students studio discussion

Michele Palmer is teaching a professional practice course at Cornell this spring and she invited me to talk with the students about my career path and what brought me to ASLA. We had a robust discussion about how personal and leadership values should be aligned and I shared mine with them which are: Integrity, Competition, Creating Social Change, Learning and Growing, Health, Intentionality, Achievement. It was a rich discussion that left me inspired by the next generation of landscape architects and leaders in our profession.

On March 22, I’ll be at the West Virginia Design and Construction Expo and I hope to see you there!