Fountain Scholars (V1)

Fountain Scholars (V1)

Since 2021, 43 landscape architecture students have been recognized as CELA Fountain Scholars.

The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture’s (CELA) Fountain Scholar Program recognizes and supports Black, Indigenous, and persons (students) of color in landscape architecture with exceptional design skills and who use their skills and ideas to influence, communicate, lead and advance design solutions for contemporary issues.

The winner and finalists from each year are showcased below. Photos are from the year the students were honored and bios are included for winners and finalists. The 2022 winner and finalists will be announced at the CELA Evolving Norms Conference in March 2022.

2022 CELA University-Level Fountain Scholars

2021 CELA Fountain Scholar Winner and Finalists

The winners and finalists were selected from a group of 22 graduate and undergraduate students nominated by their faculty for their exceptional design skills and their ability to influence, communicate, lead and advance design solutions for contemporary issues.

2021 CELA Fountain Scholar Finalist

Jaline McPherson

Jaline McPherson is a third year Master’s in Landscape Architecture Candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. As an avid artist, Jaline is interested in the inclusion and celebration of minority perspectives through a visual medium. Jaline believes that landscape architecture should be collaborative in order to celebrate, heal, and create successful communities. Before attending Harvard, Jaline worked professionally for three years as a project designer for SFCS Architects in Roanoke, VA, where she developed a desire to create inclusive environments that celebrate histories and narratives of social equity. During her time at the GSD, she has served as co-chair for the 2019 Black in Design Conference, which explored pathways to liberation through a design lens. Jaline currently serves as president for the African American Student Union at the GSD and has co-authored student publications advocating for diversity and increase representation within the fields of landscape architecture and design.

2021 CELA Fountain Scholar Finalist

Anjelyque Easley

Anjelyque Easley discovered landscape architecture while in middle school, once discovering her passion, she attended the Charter High School for Architecture and Design in Philadelphia to further her enthusiasm for art and design. Anjelyque earned her Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree in 2020 from The Pennsylvania State University.She is currently pursuing her Master of Landscape Architecture degree at The University of Texas at Arlington and intends to continue her education to further earn a PhD. The primary goal of her education is to reframe the narratives of Black landscapes throughout history with public policy in order to develop management guidelines and to gain a deeper understanding for the acknowledgment of Black landscape documentation in the field of landscape architecture. She aims to direct her research to enlarge the discourse of landscape history and to encompass the broad range of Black culture, specifically focusing on black burial site preservation.

2021 CELA Fountain Scholar Finalist

Gabe Jenkins

Gabe Jenkins is a fourth year landscape architecture student at Clemson University from Orlando, Florida. He is multi-ethnic student whose diverse upbringing has significantly shaped his passion and experience around design. Much of his work in landscape architecture focuses on creating change and impact for persons of color and the betterment of people. He uses design as a medium to not only express his ideas around making a difference but to also enhance communities to be more inclusive and sustainable. Gabe interned with the MASS Design Group in Rwanda where he worked on a design with the Rwanda Institute of Conservation Agriculture and mentored local students in the Kigali area about design. In his studio projects, Gabe incorporates extensive research of cultural communities, investigating history, geography and people. He utilizes this information to tell a unique story of place that serves to both inform and empower marginalized people.

2021 CELA Fountain Scholar Winner

Whitney Barr

Whitney Barr, PMP is currently an MLA student at the University of Georgia, a USDA Sustainable Food Systems National Needs Fellow, and the first recipient of the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s scholarship for Inclusive Community Design. She is a Spelman College alumna and was a 2013-2014 Fulbright Researcher in Seoul, South Korea. Before UGA, she most recently worked as a digital marketer and urban gardener within Atlanta’s food space. Whitney’s personal health journey led her to embrace food as medicine and food sovereignty. Her thesis is currently entitled, “Designing for racial healing: (How) can heritage crop landscapes offer a physical design response to plantation futures on Sapelo Island, Georgia?” Post-graduation, she plans to advocate for food and environmental justice through landscape design, policy reform, and urban planning. Whitney also looks forward to running her own medicinal plants boutique farm business.

2021 CELA University-Level Fountain Scholars