President’s Report

To:                   ASLA Florida Members

From:              Kevin White, President

Date:               January 18, 2019

Happy New Year to you all! New Year’s resolutions are a popular motivation for many to accomplish their goals. I’ve listened to many of your goals for the New Year, and I’m reminded of what a stellar group of folks we have within our Chapter. Several of our sub-committees are already in full swing with planning and organizing efforts for the LARE Prep session, website roll-out, Design Awards, Conference, and much more. Please continue to reach out to me if you are interested in volunteering with any of our sub-committees.


Advocacy

ASLA Membership has certainly offered a platform for us all to engage with allied professionals, elected officials and the general public to discuss our profession on so many levels. I encourage everyone to explore the many opportunities available to membership. This could include legislative tours such as our December tour in Tallahassee, but at a smaller manageable scale. It could also be a precursor to setting up city proclamations for WLAM (World Landscape Architecture Month) in April. We have a template in place that we can distribute to help streamline the process. It will be your responsibility to get on the calendars of your local municipalities. During this time of year we also initiate the process of entering many classrooms throughout the state. Teachers are pressured to meet curriculum standards but they are still supportive in planning career day opportunities. WLAM is a perfect opportunity to open the eyes of our youth to the possibilities within our profession. We have templates and tools to assist in your planning efforts either from FLAA https://flaamerica.org/ or our ASLA national resources: https://www.asla.org/ContentDetail.aspx?id=45783

.
Education

Many of the EXCOM members will be in attendance for the Ed Stone Lectures series on February 22nd. Gary Hilderbrand will be the guest speaker for this year and I look forward to seeing everyone there. Along with the rest of the Executive Committee, I want to thank the University of Florida’s Department of Landscape Architecture for hosting this event. We look forward to continuing our relationship with the program, just as we do with our friends at Florida International University. One of our ongoing goals is to explore ways for the Florida Chapter to assist our universities to recruit, educate, develop, and graduate landscape architects. On January 24th a panel will convene at the University of Florida for a resume/portfolio/interview workshop. I also want to thank Caeli Tolar, EJ Bolduc, and David Larsen for joining our team of EXCOM members for this event.

Sincerely,

G. Kevin White, PLA, ASLA

2018-2019 Florida Chapter President

president@aslaflorida.org