“The principles discussed in the webinar were influential in the development of our landscape master plan. We often employ the elements discussed in this webinar to develop and create landscapes that are grounded in reality while addressing the beautification of the campus environment.“

Candace Mastel
Facilities Planning Design and Construction
Montana State University

The landscape is continually sending messages to students, faculty, and staff; is yours saying what you want it to?

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The built environments of our colleges and universities—both the architecture and the landscape—have affective powers that come to bear in the recruitment and retention of students, faculty, and staff. The campus environment is continually sending symbolic as well as functional messages but we often don’t realize that the message received is not the intended one.

Phil Waite, an associate professor in landscape architecture and environmental planning at Utah State University, looks specifically at the role campus environments play in student recruitment and retention. Using numerous photographs and examples, he will look at social forces and cultural trends in arenas as diverse as retail anthropology, crime prevention theory, marketing and packaging, trading up and "masstige," experiential economics, demographics, and the "aesthetic imperative."  The webcast moderator is Mark Hough, ASLA, campus landscape architect at Duke University.

You will come away with fresh eyes that not only see the messages inherent in your campus landscape, but the role your environment plays in student recruitment and retention.

Questions via text or live call-in will be taken during the program.
Handouts include a PDF of the PowerPoint from the presentation and an annotated bibliography.

1. Distinguish between symbolic and functional messages encoded in the landscape of your campus.
2. Discuss landscape design oversights that can send negative messages to the campus public.
3. Discover ways to shape your environments like a retailer does, for the “recruitment and retention” of shoppers.
4. Understand how shoppers perceive products via their packages and what implications this has for the “products” of higher education.
5. Discover the vital importance aesthetics play in today’s culture and why campuses tend to be behind the curve in this regard.
6. Understand the role the experience of place plays in today’s culture.