Meet Scott Douglas

scott-douglasScott Douglas is a Graduate Student pursuing a Master of Landscape Architecture degree in the College of Fine and Applied Arts. Before joining the Illinois graduate program in 2015, he spent 15 years working as a licensed landscape architect.

Scott says he considers college campuses — especially research-heavy institutions like Illinois —the “ideal location” to test and refine new ideas and design principles. The Urbana-Champaign campus is a large contiguous land mass, so making sustainability improvements that will apply to all of campus — as landscaping does — will have a much larger impact, he says.

As he sees it, one of the biggest challenges for the Water and Stormwater SWATeam is to highlight the fact that although water is cheap here and now, it is a finite resource that must be protected and stewarded properly — and that it will take an investment of dollars to do so. Scott says campus has the determination needed to make needed changes happen, though, especially if faculty and staff encourage students to create and implement campuswide initiatives. Students, he says must be willing to lead the charge!

“I am hopeful that by the end of spring, we will have established a baseline evaluation of (campus water use) and identified potential projects and funding for those projects to begin meeting our (Illinois Climate Action Plan) goals,” he said.

Scott graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia in 1999. He hopes to become a Professor of Landscape Architecture. If he doesn’t have homework and the weather is nice, you’ll most likely find him outside in his garden.

 

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