Design charrette

Utilizing the design charrette for teaching

for teaching sustainability sustainability
Jason B. Walker and Michael W. Seymour
Department of Landscape Architecture, Mississippi State University, 157
Mississippi State, Mississippi, USA
Received 30 January 2007
Revised 4 July 2007
Abstract Accepted 27 August 2007
Purpose This paper aims to investigate the design charrette as a method for teaching
sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach The paper utilizes a student-based design charrette for the
Mississippi Gulf Coast comprising a framework for teaching sustainability. An assessment of the
charrettes role in promoting sustainability in higher education was ascertained through respondents
completing pre- and post-charrette surveys.
Findings The paper provides survey results that shed light on the effectiveness of the charrette as
an approach for teaching sustainability in higher education.
Research limitations/implications This research indicates that a charrette framed with criteria
for teaching sustainability is viable. However, the study has limitations owing to the projects scope
and its being a single-case sample.
Practical implications The paper shows that actively engaging students in interdisciplinary,
service-oriented projects is of value in teaching concepts of sustainability in higher education.
Originality/value The paper addresses the need for sustainability in higher education, focusing on
disciplines of design, by assessing the effectiveness of a well-accepted design teaching approach, the
charrette.
Keywords Higher education, Sustainable development, Learning, Design
Paper type Case study

Introduction
On August 29, 2005, hurricane Katrina ravaged the Mississippi Gulf Coast and its affect
on the present and future of the coastal region extends beyond the storm surge and
powerful winds in profound ways. Katrina dealt a devastating blow to the coastal
communities cultural identity, its economical engines, and disrupted its ecology. Like
global warming, these types of catastrophic events are overwhelming and can lead to
despair. An uncertainty on how to rebuild ones life, how to ensure the regions cultural
heritage and ecological vitality are serious issues that must be addressed along the
Mississippi Gulf Coast. However, amongst the chaos and disruption is opportunity.
Katrina presents an opportunity to re-vision, plan and construct a Mississippi Gulf Coast
that promotes a sustainable future. In addition, this natural disaster is an appropriate
event to teach sustainability to students while providing a valuable community service.
Orr (1992, p. 6) describes higher educations role in teaching environmental
responsibility: International Journal of Sustainability
in Higher Education
[. . .] by making the institution a laboratory for the study and implementation of solutions, Vol. 9 No. 2, 2008
students learn how to analyze complex, multidisciplinary problems, how to formulate and pp. 157-169
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
compare alternatives, and how to transform institutions to fit the emerging realities of the 1467-6370
next century. Instead of despair, students and faculty learn responsible optimism. DOI 10.1108/14676370810856305
IJSHE If the design professions are to remain relevant, design education must effectively
9,2 integrate sustainability into curriculas pedagogy to address the current and emerging
issues facing our society to ensure an education that espouses responsible design
solutions. The paper describes a student-based design charrette for the Mississippi
Gulf Coast comprising a framework for teaching sustainability, and evaluates the
charrettes merit as an effective pedagogical approach for fostering sustainability in
158 design education.
The constructive side of hurricane Katrina, the most destructive natural disaster in
US history, is that it is engaging the entire nation in a debate about the future of the
Mississippi Gulf Coast. Clearly, the viability and sustainability of the region are in
question. The state of Mississippi is actively addressing its Gulf Coast through the
efforts of the governors commission on recovery, rebuilding, and renewal. The
governors commission is largely responsible for orchestrating the Mississippi
Renewal Forum (Barbour, 2005). In October 2005, the Mississippi Renewal Forum
began with a weeklong design charrette involving architects, landscape architects, and
other designers from around the world to begin planning the Mississippi Gulf Coasts
future. The Mississippi Renewal Forum provided precedent for Mississippi State
University (MSU) to hold a weeklong charrette as an educational and community
service opportunity for students to engage the Katrina-affected Mississippi Gulf Coast.
As a society, there is an increasing desire to protect our resources for future
generations. Indeed, this is the impetus of the Bruntland Commissions definition of
sustainability, meeting needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on Environment and
Development, 1987). Numerous governmental agencies, non-profit organizations, and
universities are pursuing sustainability through policy, funding, and research. Even
before the term sustainability existed as we apply it today, design professionals
grappled with understanding and solidifying their role as significant contributors to
furthering a sustainable approach to design and planning. Likewise, in design education
there is growing concern about the effectiveness of green or sustainable education
within design curricula (Calkins, 2005). In 2005, Metropolis annual education survey of
practitioners and educators placed sustainability as the number one area needing
extensive research by the design disciplines (Manfra, 2005). Research expectations at
colleges and universities of higher education are on the rise for all disciplines, including
disciplines of design. It seems prudent that with increasing research expectations and
the need for sustainability research, the design disciplines have a responsibility to
advance the body of knowledge of sustainable approaches to design. While all design
disciplines likely agree that scholarly activity related to sustainability is important, how
does sustainability engage students in design education? Boyer and Mitgang (1996)
recognized the potential of studio in furthering scholarly inquiry and its applicability to
non-design disciplines as a viable educational model, however, the question of how to
teach sustainability in design education remains.

Charrette framework for teaching sustainable design

Incorporating sustainable design into design curriculums pedagogy is an increasing
trend in design education, but how, where, and by what approach it is integrated needs
addressing. Over the past two decades, concerns over integrating sustainability into
education are prevalent. For example, Eagan (1992, p. 67) is a proponent of higher Design charrette
education embracing sustainability and environmental stewardship because it: for teaching
[. . .] makes eminent sense in schools, colleges, and universities: places where we transmit sustainability
what is important about our cultures and our world. It is an idea with powerful implications
for what we value, how we live, and, notably how we educate.
Likewise, Sterling (2001) and Orr (1994), among others, have written on the importance 159
of sustainable education and creating a shift towards an ecological education that is
participatory, collaborative, holistic, values sense of place and local knowledge, and is
process-oriented. These types of descriptors of a sustainable education have led to
design educators employing the design charrette.
The term charrette, meaning cart in French, and its prominence in design education is
rooted in the LEcole des Beau Arts where students projects were collected and placed in
a cart en route to final review (Sanoff, 2000). In todays studios, the term charrette is
associated with developing a creative design solution, often in an intensive participatory
or group format, within a shortened period ranging from one day to two weeks. While the
design charrette is a commonly employed method in design education, its usefulness and
applicability to promoting green or sustainable design is a much more recent
phenomena. Condon (1996) and his students at the University of British Columbia
utilized a charrette for the City of Surrey, BC to illustrate sustainability concepts in
response to increased population growth and development pressures (Condon, 1996).
Recently, the University of Washington spearheaded Open Space Seattle 2100, a
charrette to address Seattles green infrastructure for the next century (Rottle, 2006). The
two-day charrettes solutions addressed multiple-scales, from local to global, with
participation from design professionals and concerned citizens forming teams to
envision solutions for Seattle and the neighborhoods within each teams watershed
(Rottle, 2006). In both instances, the charrettes addressed multiple-scales, from the
macro-scale of the city to the micro-scale of a watershed, in order to respond holistically
and to employ a systems approach. While these examples depict the use of a charrette to
engage issues of sustainability within design education, there is a need to examine a
charrettes effectiveness as a teaching approach to enhance student learning.
Recognizing the importance of sustainability in design education requires
formulation of educational approaches and assessments to validate teaching and
learning effectiveness. However, is a design charrette an effective educational tool for
teaching sustainability? Sutton and Kemp (2002) investigated two separate design
charrettes for their usefulness in actively engaging 4-5th and 9-12th graders with design
students, design professionals and community stakeholders in neighborhood
placemaking. The study used a pre-, post-charrette open-ended written questionnaire,
a Likert scale (1-5), a group discussion with the design students, and administered a
post-charrette open-ended written questionnaire to the children to assess the charrettes
educational benefits. The results of the childrens responses to the question of What did
you learn during the charrette? revealed that the children learned ecological awareness
(32%), design awareness (53%), and career exposure (13%), with 2% saying they did not
learn anything (Sutton and Kemp, 2002, p. 177). These results indicate that among
children, a design charrette is a sensible approach to teaching ecological and design
awareness, both of which have strong connections with teaching sustainability. The
results that emerged from the university students revealed six categories that included
IJSHE design skills, organization, learning by example, interdisciplinary teamwork,
9,2 community practice and working with children. Of these categories, learning by
example (working with professionals) received 78 and 45 percent positive responses for
the two charrettes, with interdisciplinary teamwork (reactions to working across
disciplines) getting 82 and 60 percent positive responses, and community practice
(relations with/serving a community client) received 88 and 55 percent positive
160 responses respectfully (Sutton and Kemp, 2002). These findings seem to point towards
the potential educational value of a charrette in teaching sustainability if service
learning, interdisciplinary and disciplinary collaboration is included. The MSU
charrette began to address this concern by utilizing documented principles of
sustainability and education theory as a framework in order to assess the charrettes
value in teaching sustainability in design education.
While it seems unlikely that a universally agreed upon definition of sustainability is
forthcoming, there are agreeable commonalities. The inclusion of social, economic, and
environmental issues are basic tenets of sustainability found throughout the literature
(Cartwright, 2000). Therefore, integrating these basic tenets as a foundation for sustainable
education is paramount. Effectively addressing social, economic, and environmental
issues is beyond the scope of any single discipline, which makes interdisciplinary
collaboration essential (Brunetti et al., 2003; Harris, 2004; Hou and Rios, 2003).
Numerous higher education organizations are proponents of interdisciplinary
collaboration among students and faculty (Buchbinder et al., 2005). The collaborative
nature of the charrette approach makes it an appropriate method for teaching
sustainability, as diverse perspectives are required in order to arrive at an
understanding of the economic, environmental and cultural resources of a place (Sutton
and Kemp, 2006). Deciding how to best allocate and preserve these resources requires
broad-based interdisciplinary participation. Therefore, effectively teaching
sustainability in higher education requires interdisciplinary collaboration.
Sustainability requires a holistic or systems approach that addresses
multiple-scales. There are multiple-scales of sustainability that range from the site
scale to the neighborhood, community, region, and planet. While no designer or design
project can single-handedly save the planet, design education must address
multiple-scales as each sequential scale influences the other. The slogan think
globally, act locally is an appropriate analogy for teaching sustainability in design
education that includes the macro- and micro-scales.
In addition, embracing how students learn is fundamental to all educational
endeavors and with the complexities the topic of sustainability presents, facilitating a
more inclusive learning cycle cannot be overestimated. The value of the studio model
as a viable educational approach is expanding beyond the traditional design studio
to non-studio settings by increasing the experiential learning of students. Experiential
and service learnings are similar in that learning requires active construction of
knowledge (Roakes and Norris-Tirrell, 2000). In Schons (1987) Educating the Reflective
Practitioner, the concept of reflection in action articulates learning and communication
in the architecture studio. Likewise, Kolbs (1984) Experiential Learning Theory, a
four-stage cyclical model comprising concrete experience learning by experiencing,
reflective observation learning by reflecting, abstract conceptualization learning
by thinking, and active experimentation learning by doing, furthers the
understanding of how learning occurs. Roakes and Norris-Tirrell (2000) assert that
integrating service learning in applied disciplines is appropriate because it affords Design charrette
students the opportunity to broaden their conceptual knowledge and skills by
developing an operational understanding that leads to competency, which is essential
for teaching
for professional practice. In order to evaluate the design charrettes value as a tool for sustainability
teaching sustainability, the charrette incorporated the sustainability criteria outlined in
this paper to serve as the underlying framework.
161
Charrette process
Approximately, 150 MSU students and 20 faculty and professionals participated in a
five-day charrette to research, analyze, and propose solutions for the re-building effort
along the Katrina-affected Mississippi Gulf Coast counties of Harrison, Hancock, and
Jackson. The interdisciplinary student, faculty, and professional participants included
architecture, civil engineering, business, the natural sciences, landscape contracting
and management, and landscape architecture. The landscape architecture students
ranged from freshman to graduate students. The student participants from
architecture were primarily fourth year undergraduate students, while the
participants from civil engineering and the natural sciences were graduate students.
The students comprised 24 teams, consisting of four to eight students per team. Each
team was responsible for an individual tile of six square miles within the
Katrina-affected coastal counties. The majority of the work took place in design studios
at the MSU landscape architecture facility. In conjunction with the studio environment,
keynote speakers, invited guests, and other interested parties participated in the
educational experience.
The charrette focused on developing a conceptual plan for the Mississippi Gulf
Coast utilizing principles of community, art, economy, and the environment[1].
Employing these principles singularly leads to decisions that address only one faction
or component used in the decision-making process, and the results may have adverse
or unintended effects on the other principles. However, an integration of the four
principles of community, art, economy, and the environment into a planning and
design process, begins to embrace the basic tenets of sustainability.
In order to develop a thorough understanding of the issues facing the coastal region,
teams utilized macro-scale and micro-scale analysis. The macro-scale analysis
explored and analyzed factors within Mississippi and the influence from surrounding
urban centers outside of Mississippi. The macro-scale analysis, in-turn, informed the
micro-scale analysis conducted in each teams tile. The multiple-scale analysis proved
instrumental in the development of the following dilemma and thesis statements:
Dilemma. After the destruction left by hurricane Katrina, the State of Mississippi
lacks revenue sources to create a diverse and sustaining economy.
What is the role of the coastal counties in determining a more positive
future for Mississippi?
Thesis. Diversifying the Gulf Coast counties by maximizing environmental,
economic, community and artistic assets will provide a more fulfilling
future for residents and visitors to the State of Mississippi.
As part of the macro-analysis, the students formed a better understanding of
Mississippis role in the larger region of the southeast and illustrated their
conclusions with a metaphoric rendition of Mississippi as a Central Park for the
IJSHE Southeastern USA (Figure 1). The students concluded that while the state of
9,2 Mississippi faces economic challenges, the state is robustly resource rich, both
environmentally and culturally. While the states rural and underdeveloped nature
creates difficulties in sustaining traditional economic engines, it simultaneously offers
vast underutilized environmental and ecological opportunities for densely populated
urban centers outside the state.
162 During the charrette process, interdisciplinary collaboration among team members
and teams with adjoining tiles was necessary to ensure consistency. Teams utilized an
overlay approach throughout the charrette process to fuel decision making and spark
dialogue. Throughout the process, involved and interested parties with ties to the
Mississippi Gulf Coast provided impassioned interest and valuable insight into the
teams decision-making processes. Utilizing pertinent keynote speakers to address and
further students understanding and thinking of economic, environmental, and social
concerns along the Mississippi coast complimented the charrettes framework. The
final conceptual plan (Figure 2), measuring over 12 feet in height and over 25 feet in
length, utilized existing opportunities and integrated them into a solution addressing
community, art, economy, and environmental issues, the basic tenets of sustainability.
While the students final solution generated much interest from citizens, coastal
communities, and political leadership in the state, assessing the educational value of
the charrette process as a teaching method for sustainable design required evaluation.

Evaluating the charrette process

The assessment of learning in higher education is garnering much attention from
politicians, university administrators, and teaching faculty[2]. Studio instruction has
its roots in the master-apprentice model, relying on individual centered teaching in the
development of design knowledge and skill. While many view this teaching
methodology as a traditional strength of design education, there is a need to broaden
the focus from individual centered discipline based to interdisciplinary education
models to address the complexity of teaching sustainability in design education.
Utilizing a design charrette as a sustainability teaching method in design education
seems to have value as an effective teaching tool. In order to evaluate the charrette as a

Figure 1.
Rendition of Mississippi
as Central Park for the
Southeastern USA
 Design charrette
for teaching
sustainability

163

Figure 2.
Final conceptual plan

tool for teaching sustainability, students completed a survey assessing its educational
effectiveness. The survey reveals students perceptions of the charrettes educational
importance in their design education. Specifically, the questionnaire addresses
social and economic influences, interdisciplinary collaboration, service learning, and
the overriding educational value of the charrette as a teaching method.
Evaluating the effectiveness of the charrette in teaching sustainability required an
understanding of the students pre-charrette knowledge and post-charrette knowledge.
Respondents completed pre- and post-charrette surveys to assess the value of the
charrette to further the students understanding of social and economic influences and
their relation to sustainability. The survey questions used a scale of 0 (none) to 10
(expert), a five-point Likert scale that included strongly agree, agree, undecided,
disagree, and strongly disagree, and an open-ended additional comments question to
code student responses.
In order to assess students knowledge of economic and social issues, students were
asked How would you assess your understanding of economic influences in design
and planning and How would you assess your understanding of the social/cultural
influences in design and planning? Table I shows the paired t-test analysis of pre- and

Pre-test Post-test Mean

Item mean mean difference t p

1. How would you assess your 6.30 6.90 2 0.600 21.58 0.002
understanding of economic influences
in design and planning?
2. How would you assess your 6.65 7.05 2 0.400 21.09 0.023
understanding of the social/cultural
influences in design and planning?
Notes: To control for family wise error from multiple comparisons, probability of , 0.002 was used Table I.
for decision making. Students showed significant difference in their responses to these questions, with Pre- and post-test data
post-test scores being higher than pre-test scores, n 20 analysis
IJSHE post-responses that show a statistically significant increase from pre- to post-charrette,
9,2 which indicates student perception of educational growth in the basic tenets of
sustainability.
Interdisciplinary collaboration is integral in teaching sustainable education. Figure 3
shows students survey responses vividly indicate agreement to the question of
Working with students and faculty from other university departments is important to
164 my education and Working with guest critics and professionals is important to my
education. For the first question, 95.0 percent of the respondents strongly agree or
agree while 97.5 percent of respondents strongly agree or agree with the second
question. Overwhelmingly, students recognize the importance of interdisciplinary
collaboration as none of the survey respondents disagreed with the statement. While
these results indicate a strong desire for interdisciplinary collaboration, the survey also
indicates the rarity of this approach. Figure 4 shows students responses to a question
that asked them to indicate the number of times they had worked on team projects
(at MSU only) involving students from departments other than your own. The
responses revealed a mean of 1.40 projects per respondent, with 19 of the 40
respondents indicating they had not worked on such a project during their time at the
university. Recognizing the need for interdisciplinary collaboration in teaching
sustainability is important, but integrating interdisciplinary collaboration into higher
education is more difficult. However, if sustainability is indeed important in design
education, design educators must provide opportunities for design students to
collaborate with the broader community within and outside of the university.
Another important component of the charrettes framework centered on engaging
the communities along the Gulf Coast through service learning. To assess the value
and importance of service learning in teaching sustainability, the students responded
emphatically to the question Working on real projects is important to my education
as Figure 5 shows 97.5 percent positive responses, 2.5 percent undecided and no
responses that disagreed. These results indicate that students regard incorporating
community-related service learning opportunities as essential in their educational
development.

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Undecided

Agree

Strongly Agree

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Figure 3.
Student responses to Working with guest critics and professionals is important to my
interdisciplinary education.
collaboration survey Working with students and faculty from other university
questions departments is important to my education.
 20 Design charrette
18 for teaching
16
14
sustainability
12
10
8 165
6
4
2
Figure 4.
0 Student responses that
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 indicate a lack of
interdisciplinary
Worked on team projects (at MSU only) involving students collaboration
from departments other than your own. opportunities at MSU

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Undecided

Agree

Strongly Agree
Figure 5.
0 10 20 30 40 Reveals students
responses to incorporating
Working on real projects is important to my education. service learning

The survey responses indicate the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and

service learning in fostering educational development relating to sustainability as
being valuable to their education. The following survey results deal specifically with
the charrettes educational value as a tool for teaching sustainability. Figure 6 shows
pre- and post-charrette student ratings of the charrettes value to their educational
experience using a scale of 0 (not at all valuable) to 10 (extremely valuable). The
pre-charrette responses demonstrate the anticipation of the charrettes educational
potential with 93.75 percent of the respondents rating the educational experience high
between six and ten, with a mean response of 8.31. Similarly, 80 percent of
post-charrette responses express high value between 6 and 10, with a mean response
6.70. This illustrates that the educational experience of the charrette is of significant
value for students and points to a human condition where the experience rarely live up
to our anticipation. Likewise, Figure 7 shows that 84.4 percent of respondents strongly
agree or agree that the charrette was a valuable educational experience, while
IJSHE 20
9,2 15
10
5
0
166 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Pre - Rate the value of the charrette to your educational experience

Figure 6. on a scale of 0 (not at all valuable) to 10 (extremely valuable).
Students value of the pre-
and post-charrette as an Post - Rate the value of the charrette to your educational experience
educational experience on a scale of 0 (not at all valuable) to 10 (extremely valuable).

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Undecided

Agree

Strongly Agree
Figure 7.
How students value the 0 5 10 15 20 25
charrettes educational
experience The charrette was a valuable educational experience for me.

13.3 percent disagree or strongly disagree and 2.3 percent were undecided. The
following student comments, transcribed just as written from the survey, are included
to further qualify the range of educational experiences and values students expressed
in response to the charrette. A student responded by stating:
This experience was so much more beneficial and enjoyable than I expected it to be. I was
extremely pleased with the group with which I worked. We worked together really well and
created a synergy in that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. It was great.
Clearly, this students response is a strong indicator of the importance of
interdisciplinary collaboration being important in addressing complex issues, such
as sustainability, and perhaps is an anomaly in that the educational experience of the
charrette exceeded initial expectations. Similarly, another student responded, after 4
years of undergraduate and 1 semester of graduate school, this has been the best
educational experience of my career. This should be done every year. It is evident in
this students response of the educational value of the charrette and points toward a
student endorsement of providing similar opportunities for design students to address
and learn issues relating to sustainability. At the other end of the spectrum, as
indicated in the above figures, not all students found the educational experience of the Design charrette
charrette to be positive as one student eloquently stated, it sucked, waste of time. for teaching
sustainability
Conclusion
The physical, psychological, cultural, and economic damages that the Mississippi Gulf
Coast landscape and its residents incurred because of hurricane Katrina are
overwhelming. Similar natural disasters, global warming and other environmental and 167
social concerns are compelling our society to reexamine and address how to live
sustainably. If sustainability is to occur, it must engulf and resound emphatically
throughout education if there is any hope of realizing a reasonable optimism for our
future. Orr (1994, p. 12) articulates educations role simply by stating, All education is
environmental education.
It is evident that effectively teaching sustainability in design education is important
in furthering the design disciplines ability to respond to increasing social,
environmental and economic complexities facing our common future. Design
educators often use the charrette in design education to teach students problem
solving skills. In addition, the integration of sustainability issues into design
curriculums is leading design educators to use the charrette as a way to teach
sustainability. Effectively teaching sustainability in design and higher education
presents both opportunities and obstacles.
This study shows that, in large part, the students responded positively and value
the educational experience of the charrette. The analysis reveals positive student
perceptions of the importance of service learning and interdisciplinary collaboration,
which compares favorably to Sutton and Kemps (2002) results that likewise show that
students value interdisciplinary teamwork and working with a real client or
community. These findings seem to substantiate Boyer and Mitgangs (1996, p. 85)
assertion that a more integrated design curriculum, both disciplinary and
interdisciplinary is the single most important challenge confronting architectural
programs. Clearly, collaboration and service learning present enormous educational
opportunities to broaden students perspectives and enhance their understanding of
complex issues. Although, collaboration itself is difficult to incorporate in higher
education due to a myriad of obstacles such as coordinating multiple faculty, various
student groups, and community stakeholders whose time schedules rarely coincide.
Nevertheless, there is no easy button, so faculty, students, stakeholders, and
university administrators have to be diligent in creating learning opportunities that are
in our best interest.
In order to address the challenges of effectively teaching sustainability in design,
the MSU charrette integrated a sustainability framework that included the basic tenets
of environment, economy, and society, was interdisciplinary, had a holistic systems
approach investigating multiple-scales, and integrated service learning to ensure a
more inclusive learning cycle. To assess the charrette process and its merit in teaching
sustainability, students completed pre- and post-charrette surveys to understand the
value and educational importance of the components in the sustainability framework.
The study results point to a general framework for teaching sustainability that
students perceive as valuable in furthering their education. The charrette, due to its
collaborative nature and flexibility in creating an engaging educational experience has
merit as a reasonable approach for teaching sustainability in higher education.
IJSHE Although, effective teaching of sustainability in design education should not be limited
9,2 to only the charrette model, the inclusion of the framework for teaching sustainability
is relevant and its integration into design education is important. Incorporating
sustainability in design education in a meaningful manner requires integration
throughout every design studio, construction course, or seminar. While this study
indicates the charrette process as an appropriate tool, other teaching methods need
168 assessment in order to build and broaden pedagogical approaches to teaching
sustainability in design education.

Notes
1. Planning and design firm Design Workshop partnered with Mississippi State Universitys
Department of Landscape Architecture to lead the post-Katrina charrette. Chief Design
Officer, Todd Johnson, Founding Partner Don Ensign and Landscape Architect Jeremiah
Dumas represented Design Workshop.
2. Many organizations such as the Higher Learning Commission are addressing assessment
concerns in higher education as a way to justify institutions value to students, society, and
funding sources. Likewise, most colleges and universities are re-assessing the methods and
means of assessment in learning throughout higher education.

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About the authors

Jason B. Walker is an Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator in the Department of
Landscape Architecture at MSU. He is a Registered Landscape Architect and member of the
ASLA. He holds an MLA (2001) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a
BLA (1997) from MSU. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of design for
sustainable development, issues relating to the wildland-urban interface and design education.
Jason B. Walker is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: jwalker@lalc.msstate.edu
Michael W. Seymour is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at MSU where he
teaches design studios, presentation drawing methods and golf course design. Prior to joining
the MSU Faculty, he worked as the Director of the Baton Rouge Arts District and as a Project
Manager for Lucido and Associates, a landscape architecture and land-planning firm in Stuart,
Florida. He holds a bachelors degree in art from Centenary College of Louisiana and a masters
degree in landscape architecture from Louisiana State University.

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