As I wrap up my term as Trustee, I wanted to take a moment in my last Trustee report to thank the Chapter for allowing me to serve as your Trustee. Being Trustee is both easy and hard. Easy in that we have great staff and leadership at the national level to serve our profession well. Easy also at the Chapter level because we have such an abundant level of talent and participation. For a Chapter of our size, we do extraordinary work and we always have passionate volunteers who go above and beyond in their time and energy.
Serving as Trustee is also hard since we make strategic decisions that can take many years to realize if they were a good or bad decision. Also, at the Chapter level, we take fiduciary and legal responsibility for the Chapter (Thank you to Scott, Tim, Andrew, Todd, and Adam for keeping us fiscally healthy the last few years!).
It has been exciting to see the progress of ASLA both at a Chapter and National level. The Center for Landscape Architecture will be transformative for the profession. In addition, SITES will continue to place the profession at the forefront of sustainability.
I was thinking after the ArchVision event how far we have come raising awareness of the profession. ArchVision was a huge success with the Mayor attending, other elected officials, and great press. It has been great to see the press use the term “landscape architecture” and “landscape architects” correctly (at least most of the time). I compare this to back to 2000 when we were trying to gain publicity for the Annual Meeting in St. Louis. A local publication wrote, “Spruce up your yards St. Louis! The American Society of Landscape Architects is coming to town! We have come a long way.
I look forward to continuing to help ASLA and the Chapter. While I plan to take some Chapter “retirement”, I’ll continue to be involved in advocacy, new efforts like ‘Future Cities’ to engage the next generation of landscape architects, and promoting our members efforts at a national level.
Regards,
Stephen
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