Staff Report
UNM's School of Architecture and Planning's master of landscape architecture program was recently awarded a six-year accreditation term, an honor department officials say will aid in student recruitment and help the school's national reputation.
The Landscape Architecture Accrediting Board awarded the program the longest term possible after reviewing it for the first time after it was established three years ago, said Alf Simon, director of the program.
"We are absolutely delighted to have received a full six-year accreditation as we enter the fourth year of the landscape architecture program," Simon said in a University news release. "This clearly establishes our national position as a program of quality, and will have a very large impact on our ability to enhance our recruitment efforts. The faculty, staff and students in the program are to be congratulated."
UNM joins a select group of approximately 30 institutions, including Texas Tech University and Oklahoma State University, that offer an accredited professional landscape architecture degree program at the graduate level, according to the LAAB.
Simon said although the program is still in its developing stages, more than 40 students are enrolled in it for the fall 2003 semester.
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According to the program's Web site, its mission is the investigation of principles and theories of landscape architecture and their application as tools for critical thinking and their synthesis in design thinking. Students concentrate on the issues of the Southwest in a larger world context of social, cultural, environmental and evolutionary influences on the landscape.
Landscape architecture courses have been taught in the School of Architecture and Planning at UNM for more than 25 years. In order to meet the demands for graduate landscape architects in the state, the school developed a graduate landscape architecture degree program that has the same status in the school as the Architecture and Planning programs.
Roger Schluntz, dean of UNM's School of Architecture and Planning, said the landscape architecture program was an important addition to the University, bridging the gap between the field of architecture and nature.
"Given the critical needs of this profession and New Mexico, the landscape architecture program plays a pivotal role in enriching and broadening interests of both the architecture and planning programs - bringing a common educational focus to the school in the planning, design and sustainability of our built and natural environment," Schluntz said in a University press release.
Schluntz said that because the Commission on Higher Education approved the degree program only four years ago, its recent accreditation is satisfying.
"This achievement is probably unprecedented," he said.
According to the program's Web site, future employment trends for landscape architects look promising as public awareness of the profession increases.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment of landscape architects in the United States is expected to increase 21 percent to 35 percent through the year 2006. U.S. News and World Report listed landscape architecture as the second fastest growing profession in the United States in 1999.
This means that 3,500 to 5,900 new landscape architecture jobs will be created nationally, according to figures on the bureau's Web site.
"I'm tremendously pleased that UNM received the maximum term of accreditation with our initial application," Schluntz said. "The confidence in our program conveyed by this LAAB action is quite extraordinary. I think our faculty, staff and graduate students should be very proud of their accomplishment and recognition."
