Q4 2019 Letter from the President

Hello again NMASLA members and friends! It has been an exciting year so far, with autumn here and winter seemingly right around the corner.

Looking back at the last few months, we recently held the 24th annual golf tournament and our annual student/professional mixer to kick off the school year with our student ASLA members, among other smaller events that we have participated in with other organizations. These events have been a great success, thanks to all of you who came out and participated.

Coming up, November 15-18, is the ASLA national conference in sunny San Diego. Early bird registration has passed but there is still time to register at the regular rate. The annual conference looks to have a great lineup of education sessions, vendor presentations and networking opportunities as usual. Our incoming President (Kenneth Francis), incoming Trustee (Jitka Dekojova), and current Trustee (Rob Loftis) will be headed to San Diego just ahead of the conference to attend meetings with other ALSA state chapter leadership to strategize and plan for the coming year.

As always, please visit our website, NMASLA.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter to find information on our upcoming events. I hope to see you all at the NMASLA Holiday Party in December sponsored by our friends at Victor Stanley. Stay tuned for details to come soon.

Lastly, I would like to thank all of NMASLA’s generous sponsors throughout the year. Their support makes all of our chapter activities possible. Thank you also to each of our members for your continued membership and support of NMASLA. If you have questions, would like to volunteer to help out at any of our events, or need any other support from NMASLA please let us know. We’d love to hear from you and hope to see you at our next event!

Scott Culler, PLA, ASLA

ASLA Advocacy Summit recap

NMASLA members,

At the beginning of September I attended the ASLA Advocacy Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, along with all of the other ASLA state chapters in a two day workshop aimed at building better strategies for the advocacy of our profession and our licensure. Three pillars of Advocacy were outlined to us over the weekend: Site Tours, State Advocacy Days, and State Resolutions/ Proclamations.

In line with the first pillar, our weekend started off with a site tour of the S-line, which is a streetcar project that also has a multimodal and walking trail along it. It runs through the Sugar House neighborhood of Salt Lake City and used to be the D&RGW trail right of way that went up to Park City. The tour was a strong example of the kind of projects we need to showcase that advocate for the importance of landscape architecture. It was lead by local design team members who had also invited public officials involved in the project, so the press showed up for the event as well. (Or perhaps it was the press who showed up, and why the politicians showed up too!).

One of the most useful things learned about during the summit was the updated ASLA Advocacy webpage, which I encourage you to visit. It contains a new Advocacy FAQ (you must be logged in as a member to see it) that guides you through an thorough list of questions you might have for our profession’s organization and its positions on advocacy. Within, there is a wealth of supportive material for advocating our profession. There is a tool to locate your Legislators along with contact information, for example. There are various "leave-behinds" for public officials, templates for proclamations, and other helpful resources to save you time and effort. There is also an up-to-date US Map with each state’s bills that currently affect landscape architects here. By clicking on the state you live in, you can learn about bills that are on the table that are either support us or oppose us.

 By being ASLA members, you are already advocating, because you all contribute to the advocacy of our profession to fight for our licensure as a part of our annual dues. Thank you for being a part of NMASLA so our voices are heard. And if you can go beyond that by being more active in our local and state government, to let our representatives and our communities know the importance of what we do, please let us know. We are all here to build a stronger landscape architecture community across New Mexico.

 Kenneth Francis, PLA, ASLA

NMASLA STUDENT/PROFESSIONAL MIXER

The annual NMASLA student/professional mixer was held on Friday, September 13 to kick of the school year with our student members. The event was held at Differential Brewing and was well attended by our professional members and the UNM students. At the event NMASLA presented three awards: the Outstanding Executive Committee Member Award, the Friend of NMASLA Award, and the Distinguished Community Leadership Award.

The Outstanding Executive Committee Member Award was presented to Bonnie Strange for her dedicated work on the Executive Committee as the education chair submitting events for continuing education credits, helping to plan our events, and her general willingness to jump and help out whenever there is a need.

The Friend of NMASLA Award was presented to the NeighborWoods tree planting program for their invaluable community service to many of the City of Albuquerque’s neighborhoods by acquiring materials, organizing, educating volunteers, and creating a lasting impact by planting hundreds of trees within residential neighborhoods.  All of which comes at no direct cost to homeowners through collaboration with NMASLA and funding by local representatives. The NeighborWoods tree planting program has grown steadily and consistently over the last three years and plans are underway to plant six hundred new trees this fall! 

The Distinguished Community Leadership Award was presented to Rich Williams for his sustained leadership in the community demonstrating the value of landscape architecture as it contributes to the work currently shaping our environment. As the director for over 16 years, New Mexico MainStreet grew from 9 to 30 communities and added the Arts and Cultural District program, the Historic Theaters Initiatives and the Frontier and Native American Initiatives. These programs concentrated on creating an economically viable business environment while preserving cultural and historic resources in our New Mexico communities. Rich not only added a Landscape Architect to the MainStreet consultant team but has also created the Great Blocks program which has allowed landscape architects to lead the redesign of three block areas in five New Mexico towns, with hopefully more on the way.  For Rich’s efforts we are delighted to honor him with our Distinguished Community Leadership Award.

Lastly, we also want thank our very generous sponsor ANOVA for making this event possible!

Pop-up playground recap

On Saturday, October 26th ACE Leadership High School, in cooperation with NMASLA, held its 5th annual Pop-Up-Playground.  The event lasted about three hours and drew an attendance of approximately 200 students.  As always, there was no shortage of creative and challenging ways the children constructed play environments and we even had special guest appearances by Alan Armijo, City of Albuquerque Director of Constituent Services and Orbit, the Albuquerque Isotopes mascot. Thank you to all of our sponsors, we look forward to next year’s event!

Justin Weathermon, PLA, ASLA

NMASLA has updated LARE study prep materials to share. Contact our Emerging Professionals Committee here to learn more about the resources available.