The University of Oregon (UO) is celebrating the hard work of a team of Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) students, Inanna Hencke, Jessie Crown, Lucy Gonzalez, Leo Frampton, and Justin Mouledous. The cohort was internationally recognized by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) and awarded the 2025 Creative Scholarship Award for their work with Coastal Futures, an ongoing teaching and research effort led by Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Climate Change Resilience, Ignacio Lopez-Buson.
Coastal Futures is supported by the 2024 UO Sustainability Fellows Program (SFP) which is coordinated by Sarah Stoeckl from the UO Office of Sustainability and funded as part of the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute to support faculty to do community-engaged teaching and research. Lopez-Buson's work focuses on climate change adaptation strategies for coastal communities in Oregon with Rockaway Beach being Lopez-Buson's first case study pursuing the development of an adaptable methodology that could be used by any local government and community organizations along the Oregon coast.
The coast is an important ecological, economic, and public asset, and any work to ensure the health and prosperity of this region is essential to preserving Oregon’s character and communities. During the fall term, Lopez-Buson and the MLA students visited and analyzed Rockaway Beach, meeting with local stakeholders to understand the values and challenges of the local community, including coastal erosion, sea level rise, deforestation, drinking water quality, tourism, and urban development.
Partnering with North Coast Communities for Watershed Protection (NCCWP), a grass-roots association of citizens from Rockaway Beach and surrounding communities, this public presentation showcased their research on sustainable coastal practices and explored paths for long-term resilience. More than a hundred community members attended to learn more about coastal sustainability issues and engaged in a discussion about planning for a more environmentally and socially resilient future.
"The students were incredibly motivated and excited to share their findings with the community and help continue the conversation around a socially and environmentally resilient future for Rockaway Beach and the Oregon coast," explained Lopez-Buson.
The work and the project was universally recognized and celebrated during the CELA 2025 Annual Conference. The CELA Student Creative Scholarship Award represents the highest level of recognition that the organization can bestow on a landscape architecture student’s performance with the first year students earning this award in their first-ever studio class.
The mission of CELA is to encourage, support, and further education in the field of landscape architecture specifically related to teaching, research, scholarship, and public service. The organization is composed of virtually all the programs of higher learning in landscape architecture in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
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