Student Scholarships and Fellowships

Congratulations to our 2020 scholarship winners!

LAF has awarded a total of $103,000 to 17 outstanding students for its 2020 scholarship season. These scholarships reward superior student performance, support access and diversity, fund original research, and assist students with unmet financial need.

Scroll through to see bios and photos of these deserving students.

In the fall, LAF will announce its scholarships available for the 2020-2021 academic year and begin accepting applications. Applications are due Feb 1 with the winners announced in the spring.

These awards are made possible through funds established by our generous sponsors.

• Winner Announcement
• 2020 Jurors
• Awards Available Annually

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

LAF Honor Scholarship in Memory of Joe Lalli, FASLA
Award: $20,000

Gaelle Gourmelon
MLA Candidate, University of Virginia

Through her work, Gaelle Gourmelon is interested in exploring and revealing hidden systems and connections–from urban residents’ relationship with wildlife to dynamics of power in public spaces. She holds a Master of Arts in Public Health from Emory University in Global Environmental Health and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Prior to returning to school, she worked as a fellow hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and as the Communications Director for a sustainability think tank, the Worldwatch Institute. She credits her multicultural background in France, Mexico, and the United States for her appreciation of place, botany, and craft.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarships Winners!

LAF Honor Scholarship for Inclusive Community Design
Award: $10,000

ASLA-NY Designing in the Public Realm Scholarship
Award: $5,000

Natalie Galarza
MLA Candidate, City College of New York

Natalie comes to Landscape Architecture from a background in Environmental Policy. As landscape architects are trained in systems-based thinking, she believes landscape architecture will increasingly contribute to higher-level decision-making in a rapidly changing climate. Her current work focuses on spatializing community-based solar power and other renewable energy sources in Puerto Rico as a catalyst for micro-economies.  

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

ASLA Florida Chapter Career Discovery Scholarships
Award: $5,000

Mara Stegaru
MLA Candidate, Florida International University

Mara earned her undergraduate degree in civil engineering at Northeastern University. There, she gained experience in building technology. At Florida International University, Mara’s area of focus is on developing a design process rooted in geospatial analysis and immersive community engagement. As Vice President of FIU ASLA, she creates experiential learning opportunities that emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration for successful problem-solving. Mara strives for a career that empowers communities to overcome shared challenges through direct action and playful design.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

ASLA Florida Chapter Career Discovery Scholarships
Award: $5,000

Sebastian Hilpl
MLA Candidate, University of Florida

Sebastian earned his BS in Environmental Science from Florida State University. He was drawn to landscape architecture for its broad and complex scope of work. He believes the blend of design creativity and technicalities of science, construction, and engineering offer a profession within which he can discover his niche. His passions span large concepts like stormwater design and ecological restoration to the small details of construction and planting design. In his spare time, he can be found anywhere from Florida’s coastal flats fly fishing for Tarpon, to the inland marshes pursuing waterfowl.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

Peridian International, Inc./Rae L. Price, FASLA Scholarship
Award: $5,000

Nola Talmage
Landscape Architecture Certificate, UCLA Extension

Nola lives in Los Angeles and is a mother of two girls. After graduating, she plans to become a certified landscape architect. Her professional background spans contemporary art, commercial photography, and architectural preservation advocacy. She offers her perspective as a mixed-race African-American woman from Washington, DC to enrich the profession as it has been practiced in Southern California. The monuments, parks, landmarks and museums of DC informed her orientation to scale and intimacy in landscape design. But it is her love and awe of the arid landscapes of Southern California and the mountainous Sierras in the North that compelled her to pursue landscape architecture.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

Steven G. King Play Environments Scholarship
Award: $5,000

Allyson Fairweather
MLA Candidate, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Allyson discovered her passion for design during her undergraduate studies in Interior Design at Endicott College.  Inspired by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s “Third Place” theory, her research studied qualities of the built environment that positively promote gathering behavior, social interaction, and place-making. She chose to pursue an MLA to expand her prior research interests from interior to exterior space, and gain an interdisciplinary perspective to assist her design approach. Her current educational interests range across nature playscapes, therapeutic landscape design, and teaching hand drafting and sketching techniques to landscape architecture students.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

Landscape Forms Scholarship in Memory of Peter Schaudt, FASLA
Award: $5,000

Claire Jarvis
BLA Candidate, University of Georgia

Claire Jarvis is from Florida by way of Chicago. She seeks to use landscape architecture as a means of restoring degraded North American landscapes to ecological health, and aspires to get others excited about the value and necessity of native trees and plants. In her free time, she likes to study the interplay of plants, soils, microorganisms, animals, geology, and human life. When not in the studio or hiking, she has been known to play niche sci-fi board games, illustrate comics, ride her bike lots, and whip up some mean vegetarian cuisine.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

EDSA Minority Scholarship
Award: $5,000

Alexandra Burgos
MLA Candidate, University of Washington

Originally from Orange County, CA Alexandra spent the last 5 years living in San Francisco and, now, Seattle. She's a proud daughter of two immigrants, to whom she owes everything. She cannot wait for the day she can design something in both of her parents’ home countries, Chile and Honduras. She entered landscape architecture with a dream to create sustainable and healthier spaces for marginalized communities of color. Her research, which focuses on climate change’s impact on marginalized communities and the growing climate refugee crisis, has taken her to Peru & Nepal. Outside the studio, Alexandra enjoys practicing ballet, skateboarding with her gal pals, and swimming in the nearest body of water.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

ASLA Council of Fellows Scholarship
Award: $5,000

Rain Bird Intelligent Use of Water™ Scholarship
Award: $2,500

Courtney Helmliner
BLA Candidate, Ball State University

Courtney is from St. Marys, OH and graduated from Memorial High School in 2016. At Ball State, she works in the Architecture Library and as a teaching assistant and is minoring in Social and Environmental Justice and Strategic Communications. She has been involved in Women’s Club Soccer, Intramural Soccer, and Global Brigades. Additionally, she likes to hike and travel. Following graduation, she plans to work at a firm and become a licensed PLA. She aims to lead in the field by advocating for the profession and acting as a catalyst for the improvement of under-represented communities through empathy-based, inclusive design.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

ASLA Council of Fellows Scholarship
Award: $5,000

Holley Stringham
BLA Candidate, Utah State University

Holley grew up near the mountains in Utah, where her love of nature and being outdoors originated. She is currently a Junior at Utah State University in the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning program and has taken an interest in working with local groups to bring about positive community change. She is now working with a nearby refugee and immigrant center to design a community garden and event center. Holley is driven by community engagement and aims to use those interests in her future career in landscape architecture and urban design.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

ASLA Council of Fellows Scholarship
Award: $5,000

Aus Perez
BLA Candidate, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Aus is a third-year landscape architecture major from Holdrege, Nebraska. Upon graduating, they hope to obtain a Master’s degree in landscape architecture and urban planning. In the future, they hope to become a college professor and pursue their own research goals related to landscape architecture. As a first-generation student, Aus’ college professors have helped them discover their passion for landscape architecture, and Aus cannot wait to help others find their love for this field of study, too. Aus loves exploring new landscapes, going to concerts with their friends, and taking care of all their plants.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

ASLA Council of Fellows Scholarship
Award: $5,000

David Curry
BLA Candidate, North Carolina A&T State University

David has been an avid lover of the outdoors since he was young. This love for the outdoors transformed into a passion when he got his Associates in Landscape Gardening at Sandhills Community College. He then interned at a local Nursery. He later decided to pursue a Bachelor’s in Landscape Architecture to bring all the considerable plant knowledge he had gained to the design process. After completing his BLA, he intends to work in the industry while gaining his certification before going on to pursue a Master’s degree. He plans to one day open his own firm. He is a lover 3D modeling, as well as a hobbyist in 3D printing. He hopes to combine the two into his future practice.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

Douglas Dockery Thomas Fellowship in Garden History and Design
Award: $4,000

Aja Grande
PhD Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Aja is a public scholar of civic infrastructures and land ecologies as spaces of subject formation. She is an MIT PhD student in the Department of History, Anthropology, Science Technology & Society where she story tells the emergent forms of living among built environments in twentieth and twenty-first century Hawai'i. While completing her BA in Science and Society from Brown University, she founded and ran the Ethnobotany Society at Brown for students to explore the relationship between people and plants in Providence, Rhode Island. Born and raised on the island of O'ahu in Hawai'i, she has been gifted with an obligation to raise awareness about and sustain mindful relations with the ‘āina (that which feeds).

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

Douglas Dockery Thomas Fellowship in Garden History and Design
Award: $4,000

Yoni Angelo Carnice
MLA Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Yoni is a gardener and received a BS in Environmental Science from Loyola Marymount University. His previous work involved ecological restoration with the Presidio Trust in San Francisco and serving as a Climate Action Fellow for the City of Oakland. He currently studies the journals of colonial-era European plant hunters, European garden traditions and their exploitation of plants from colonized territories, and the establishment of botanical gardens in Southeast Asia. He is also interested in artists like Derek Jarman, Jamaica Kincaid, and Demetrio Braceros, who are using the garden to study and express a personal relationship to history, mortality, and community.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

Courtland Paul Scholarship
Award $3,500

Eleanor Frey
BSLA Candidate, The Ohio State University

Ellie is from Bay Village, OH (a suburb of Cleveland) and is the oldest of five kids. She is currently a junior studying landscape architecture at Ohio State University. She is involved with the Architecture, Landscape, and City Scholars program, serves as Vice President to Ohio State’s chapter of SCASLA, and volunteers as a Knowlton Ambassador, leading tours of the architecture building to prospective students. Outside of school, she loves to paint, read, write, run, and figure skate. She is currently seeking a summer internship and exploring graduate school options.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

Hawaii Chapter ASLA/David T. Woolsey Scholarship
Award: $2,000

Jonathan Stanich
MLA Candidate, University of Hawai'i - Manoa

Jonathan has always preferred working with his hands. He earned Bachelor of Environmental Design at the University of Hawai'i - Manoa after beginning this undertaking at Washington State University. He is on track to earn his MLA in May 2021, and plans to seek licensure and fulltime employment in public service or private industry. Born and raised on the island of Maui, he has traveled to Japan and China through his studies at the University. He enjoys outdoor activities, surfing, hiking, skiing, snowboarding, and traveling.

Congratulations to Our 2020 Scholarship Winners!

Runner Up: LAF Honor Scholarship for Inclusive Community Design
Award: $2,000

Jose Guadalupe Gutierrez
MLA Candidate, California State Polytechnic University Pomona

For seven years, Jose has worked as a greenspace organizer in Los Angeles, guiding park and community garden projects across the county through the community design process. Jose has worked with the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust and From Lot to Spot, nonprofits that fight for park equity by building parks and community gardens in neighborhoods that need them the most. Jose plans to continue advocating for park access in LA as a project manager, overseeing the design, bidding, and construction process to build a quality, regional greenspace system that everyone can enjoy.