Launched in Fall 2021, the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (BLA) program prepares students for careers as landscape architects who will imagine, design, and build the 21st century’s landscape. Landscape architecture both offers the tools to engage many of the most pressing issues the world faces today and works with a medium-the landscape-that is richly expressive and engaging. In our studio-focused curriculum, students explore contemporary issues, directly engage landscapes and communities outside the wall of the university and learn with a faculty of leading landscape practitioners and researchers.
The program allows students to spend all eight semesters of their undergraduate career in a studio-focused curriculum. Students focus in the areas of landscape practice that distinguish our curriculum, student work, and faculty research: Fieldwork, Landscape Advocacy and Design Research. With the program’s experiential learning approach, students are able to apply their education toward solving real-world problems, this results in a comprehensive portfolio of their designs and creations to present to potential employers.
The Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board (LAAB) is the agency responsible for the accreditation of professional degree programs that lead to licensure in the field. With the Fall 2021 launch of Auburn’s Undergraduate Program in Landscape Architecture, the program will not be eligible to apply for accreditation until one year after the first group of graduates, which will fall within the 2025/2026 academic year. As a point of context, Auburn’s Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture has been accredited since its inception and we are optimistic that our efforts in the Undergraduate Program will result in the same outcome. If the program is successful in its pursuits of accreditation in the 2025-2026 academic year, then accreditation will apply to any 2024 or 2025 graduates as well.