Katherine Kraszewska – Region 1 Director Candidate
Katherine Kraszewska is a landscape designer who joined the SDC in the summer of 2019. She earned a Ph.D. in Sustainable Bio-Products from the College of Forestry, Mississippi State University, and is the owner and principal designer of Kraszewska Landscape Design Consulting, based in Boise, Idaho. Her research explores innovative, low impact development practices and policy as a means towards sustainable stormwater management. Her research-based expertise includes the remediation of bio-oil contaminated stormwater through the use of constructed wetlands, reducing the negative environmental impact of wastewater treatment from the bio-oil industry. Currently, she is studying the evolution of landscape design to encompass agricultural stormwater runoff and the reduction of non-point source pollution in the Midwestern United States. Katherine is committed to promoting sustainable landscape design methodology in her research, teaching, and design practice. Her work has been recognized through award winning collaborations and publication in peer-reviewed journals. Her previous service to CELA includes being a frequent reviewer for conference abstracts since 2016.
Katherine is a current assistant professor with Washington State University’s landscape architecture program in the school of Design and Construction. She has been a tenure-track faculty member since the August 1st of 2019. She is also not serving as an officer of the CELA.
If elected as Regional director for Region 1, Katherine acknowledges that her role will entail the responsibilities of verifying CELA memberships, serving on the Advisory Standing Committee and student awards jury, attending board and committee meetings, coordinating regional meetings, reporting on regional program news, and performing other tasks needed. Katherine’s plan to provide service to CELA as a Regional director are two fold. First, she hopes to explore and develop ways in which graduate students can participate and play a larger role in the CELA community. As the profession and academic breadth of landscape research continues to grow, the graduate student community requires a larger platform to share their research and explore potential connections to strengthen their work. If elected as regional director, Katherine will explore ways to develop this objective further. A second goal for Katherine is to expand opportunities for financial and mentorship support for early career researcher and faculty in Landscape Architecture. In order to encourage a strong community of both research and academic leaders in the field of Landscape Architecture, early career faculty need knowledgeable and well-defined support on how to develop their careers to be concurrently valuable to the students they instruct and the topics they explore in their research. If elected as regional director, Katherine will explore opportunities for early career faculty to seek out and utilize a network of mentors and advisors that can facilitate success in instruction, funding and proliferation of their research.