UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State landscape architecture student Anjelyque Easley has been selected as the undergraduate 2019 Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) National Olmsted Scholar. She is the first Penn State student to receive the recognition, which comes with a $15,000 prize and is considered the highest honor for students in landscape architecture.
Easley, who just completed her fourth year at Penn State, is slated to graduate with a bachelor of landscape architecture degree in May 2020. She is minoring in Jewish studies and is enrolled in the Holocaust and genocide studies certificate program in the College of the Liberal Arts.
Easley’s research focuses on the erasure of the African-American influence on the American landscape and the parallels between post-World War II Jewish landscapes and post-slavery African-American landscapes.
“I am truly grateful for the support of my friends and my professors, Marc Miller and [Paul] Dan[iel] Marriott, who motivated me along my way,” said Easley. “I am so excited to continue my research on a regional and international scale.”
Established in 2008, the LAF Olmsted Scholars Program recognizes and supports students with exceptional leadership potential who are using ideas, influence, communication, service and leadership to advance sustainable design and foster human and societal benefits. Easley serves as president of the Penn State chapter of the National Organization of Student Architecture Students and as a member of both the Landscape Architecture Student Society and the Landscape Architecture Leaders. She also is a student ambassador for the College of Arts and Architecture and a teaching assistant at the Architecture and Landscape Architecture Summer Camp.
“The Landscape Architecture Foundation's Olmsted Scholars program is absolutely the highest honor that a student can achieve in our field,” said Eliza Pennypacker, head of the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Stuckeman Chair of Integrative Design. “Only the nation's most outstanding student leaders are recognized as Olmsted Scholars; we are incredibly proud, both of Anjelyque's accomplishment and of her representation of Penn State Landscape Architecture within this illustrious group.”
Areti Athanasopoulos, a master’s student at the University of Colorado Denver, was selected as the graduate LAF National Olmsted Scholar. In addition to Easley and Athanasopoulos, three finalists were also named at both the undergraduate and graduate levels for program honors.
Two independent juries of leaders in the landscape architecture profession selected the 2019 winners and finalists from a group of 49 graduate and 37 undergraduate students who were nominated by their faculty for being exceptional student leaders. The eight top students this year join the community of 720 LAF Olmsted Scholars that have been named since the program’s inception.