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Over the past couple weeks I’ve traveled to Charleston, West Virginia and Manhattan, Kansas. It’s always great to be out in the field.
At the invitation of Chapter President, Jacob Burns, I joined the West Virginia Chapter for their annual gathering at the Design and Construction Expo and I met with Peter Butler and students from West Virginia University.
After touring the expo floor and meeting chapter members at their booths, we all gathered for lunch–big thanks to Laura Cox and her firm for sponsoring–and I talked with the group about the Climate Action Plan and Women of Color Licensure Advancement Program. 
Torey Carter-Conneen presenting ASLA Climate Action Plan to West Virginia Chapter; photo credit, Jacob Burns
In a smaller group discussion with the students we talked about how they see themselves in the profession. As I spend more time with students across the country, there are some pretty consistent themes that emerge. Most common among these themes is a desire to have meaningful work aligned with their values rather than having work or a profession define their identity. This matches national trends across professions –you can read more here.
Becoming more civically engaged is one way the profession of landscape architecture can evolve to meet the next generation of professionals. When I talk to students about civic engagement they all light up and the conversation becomes very animated. There are many ways to approach this evolution and in West Virginia Laura Cox Planning and Design is a great example of that. Laura’s firm has created a business model that helps small towns all over the state apply for grant funding for local projects. Her firm has raised over $10M to help towns revitalize Main streets, address stormwater flooding, and purchase safety equipment. Advocacy and civic engagement is also a theme from my trip to LABash which I summarize later in this blog.
Relatedly, after the Expo, the WVU students went on a site visit for a project they have with the nearby town of Beckley. Peter and his students are helping the town redesign a vacant lot to be a community gathering place. This is part of a larger series of grant-funded partnership projects with local communities around the state.
On our way to dinner Jacob gave us a tour of the Peter Brawley Walkway and Slack Plaza, projects that were led by GAI Consultants. The plaza is a community gathering place with a performance stage, food truck hookups and bistro tables. The new walkway is a wider, well-lit and safer pedestrian corridor that connects the convention center and downtown Charleston. All along the walk Jacob took time to point out specific design elements to the students and explain what problems the project was aiming to address.
Just last week I was in Manhattan, Kansas for LABash, hosted by Kansas State University. Huge thanks to Dean Tim de Noble, AIA and department head Huston Gibson, ASLA for their warm welcome and to co-organizers Nicole Beard and Emily Siler and the whole team in planning the event. 
Torey Carter-Conneen addressing LABash Conference; photo credit, LABash/Suzanne Sharp
LABash is quickly becoming one of my favorite events of the year. I reconnected with students I’d met previously either on their campus or at our conference–it’s exciting to see so many students stay engaged with ASLA and help drive our work forward. In my remarks I talked specifically about how students have helped shape our work–it was thanks to student advocacy that our climate action plan was pushed to completion. The more students I meet the more I see how their inclusive vision will shape the profession to be more civically engaged.
Also in the opening session, Kene Okigbo, ASLA openly shared both the joy and the pain points he experienced early in his career. He talked about staying true to his vision even when it was hard and finding creative ways to restore his resilience for the long haul. This is such an important message for students to hear.
That journey message is one that I also raised in my earlier remarks and I encouraged students to seek out mentors among the practicing professionals in the room, many of whom are also current or former volunteer leaders within ASLA.
And speaking of ASLA leadership, ASLA President, Emily O’Mahoney, FASLA kicked off Thursday by sharing her vision of the profession with the students over breakfast. Immediate Past President Jeannie Martin, FASLA was part of a panel discussion on paradigm-shifting non-design roles in the profession. In addition, VP of Government Affairs, Joy Kuebler, ASLA spoke about community engagement and VP of Finance, Chris Della Vedova, ASLA represented his firm Confluence as an event sponsor.
Our ASLA staff team was also there in full force including Daniel Martin, Hon. ASLA, Kris Pritchard, Matt Alcide, Affiliate ASLA, Matthew Gallegher and Caleb Raspler.
It was a great time and I’m already looking forward to next year at UC Davis.
In the coming weeks my destination will again be Manhattan–but in New York this time. More on that in the next edition of this newsletter.