Master of Landscape Architecture

Initiated in 1954, Georgia’s MLA program is one of the oldest and most prestigious graduate landscape architectural programs in the country, with the largest and most complete landscape architectural faculty anywhere. Among Georgia’s MLA alumni are winners of national design competitions, Presidents and Fellows of the American Society of Landscape Architects, heads of prestigious university departments, senior editors of national journals, leaders of the National Park Service and other public institutions, designers of Olympic venues, and leading practitioners all over the world. Each year about 16 new students are selectively admitted to the program.

Georgia provides landscape architecture education that is broad and adaptable to the interests of individual students. The MLA program employs student-defined research to develop the unique professional roles of its students, producing graduates who can use the powers of scholarship, design, and communication to discover, advocate, and implement superior landscape solutions.

Georgia employs the largest full-time landscape architecture faculty in the country, ensuring that all specializations within the field are represented. Small graduate classes within the large, diverse school are supportive of intellectual and social debates. The Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture (MLA) at the University of Georgia provides the foundational knowledge, practical skills and design expertise needed to engage in the practice of landscape architecture. In addition, it provides students the opportunity to focus and define their unique position within the profession through scholarly discovery in an interdisciplinary environment. Georgia MLA students are prepared to lead the profession as outstanding practitioners, educators, and scholars in the design, management, and environmental stewardship of the natural and built environment.

Students may follow programs of study ranging from one to three years, depending on their educational and professional backgrounds. Students in the three-year track add to a solid liberal arts background with their first professional design degree. Students with prior degrees in design enter the two- or one-year tracks, seeking further professional development and intellectual content in their work. All advanced students define their individual roles in the profession by taking elective courses and identifying specific faculty for focused study. In the final year of study, when all students are working on specialized courses and individual research, students who discovered landscape architecture only a few years before may work side-by-side with licensed practitioners with 10 years or more of professional experience.

Job demand and average salaries for landscape architectural graduates have been steadily increasing and are at an all time high. In addition to competitive salaries and plentiful job opportunities, the profession offers the satisfaction of designing and shaping the built environment alongside architects, planners, and urban designers. Many of the country’s leading private and public sector landscape architects and essentially all of the country’s landscape architectural educators hold MLA degrees.

All MLA students are required to complete a written thesis in their last year of the program. Recent thesis topics have included a broad range of design, planning and management initiatives including public art, stormwater management, public health, open space planning, and historic gardens. In addition, students have worked on designs for scenic byways, rural conservation easements and urban redevelopment projects. Thesis topics range in scale from rural vegetable stands to regional vegetation analysis.

All students are encouraged to obtain professional experience during their summers at UGA and can receive course credit for internships. In recent years internships and independent studies have placed students internationally in Scotland, Italy, Germany, and Costa Rica. Recently students have interned with consulting firms in Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Michigan, and Virginia.

A series of endowed lectures brings distinguished practitioners of landscape architecture, architecture, and historic preservation for major lectures and extended meeting with students. Each year the College of Environment and Design holds a lecture series featuring practitioners and faculty who share their practice and research with the college. Recent guests have included Kenneth Helphand, landscape architect and author of Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime; Eric King, President elect of the Georgia Urban Forest Council; and Kenneth Reardon, professor and director of graduate studies in city and regional planning at the University of Memphis. The College of Enviroment and Design also holds community events such as the Nature Smart Schools Symposium which recently featured professionals such as Richard Louv, best-selling author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, and Robin Moore, professor and director of the Natural Learning Initiative. Faculty remain current on educational movements and technology by attending the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) conference regularly. Students of the College of Environment and Design are also encouraged to take advantages of activities in neighboring colleges such as the Red Clay Conference, an annual environmental law conference held each spring in the law school facilities adjacent to the College of Environmental Design. The University of Georgia hosted the first American conference on landscape ecology, four annual conferences of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, and the first two international conferences on environmental ethics.

The MLA program is accredited by the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board and the American Society of Landscape Architects. Accreditation reviews by LAAB occur every 5-6 years. The next accreditation visit is scheduled for 2015.

Brian LaHaie
609 Caldwell Hall
706-542-4704