Landscape architecture professor and students participate in Shanghai workshop

Wendy Jacobson, associate professor of landscape architecture in Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies, participated with two students and a recent Virginia Tech graduate in an interdisciplinary, international design workshop sponsored by Tongji University in Shanghai, China, in August.

Jacobson joined faculty from three other countries as tutors for the exercise, Urban Memory and Landscape: Landscape Regeneration of the Waterfront of the Suzhou River, Shanghai. The 35 student participants represented three disciplines, 10 countries and 25 universities worldwide.

Virginia Tech students Amy Yu of Vienna, Va., a third-year landscape architecture student; Nicholas Wilson of North Potomac, Md., a third-year architecture student; and alumnae Jana Davis (bachelor’s degree in urban planning, 2005); now a landscape architecture graduate student at the University of Colorado, were in teams that tied for second place in an associated juried competition.

In addition to her teaching activities at Tongji, Jacobson met with interested students to discuss landscape architecture graduate degree programs at Virginia Tech. Jacobson, a resident of Newport, Va., received a master’s of landscape architecture from the University of Guelph, and a bachelor’s degree from Dalhousie University.

Her trip was a follow-up to an April 2007 visit to Tongji University by Jack Davis, College of Architecture and Urban Studies Dean, and three landscape architecture faculty, as well as a visit by five Tongji landscape architecture faculty to Virginia Tech in fall 2006. These visits have laid the groundwork for collaborative research, teaching, and student/faculty exchanges between the institutions.

The College of Architecture and Urban Studies is one of the largest of its type in the nation. The college is composed of three schools and the Department of Art and Art History, part of the multi-college School of the Arts. The School of Architecture + Design includes programs in architecture, industrial design, interior design, and landscape architecture. The School of Public and International Affairs includes programs in urban affairs and planning, public administration and policy, and government and international affairs. The Myers-Lawson School of Construction, a joint school of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies and the College of Engineering, includes programs in building construction and construction management. The college enrolls nearly 2,000 students offering 24 degrees taught by 153 faculty members.