Equity in landscape architecture starts before college and continues through curriculum, faculty relationships, mentoring and entry into practice. Ayana Belk’s 2022 Kansas State University study, Equitably Mirroring the Nation: Black Students’ Experiences in Landscape Architecture, found varied routes into the discipline alongside recurring concerns about exposure, representation and isolation. It offers a bounded 2020–2021 snapshot—not a current census—and points to practical changes across the educational pipeline.
What Belk’s study actually examined
Belk used a critical narrative case-study approach informed by Critical Race Theory. The project combined descriptive survey data, open-ended responses and eight in-depth interviews to ask how Black students discover landscape architecture, select programs and navigate academic institutions. The survey included 97 Black students enrolled across 28 Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board (LAAB)-accredited programs, with a reported 47% response rate.
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The enrollment context comes from the 2020–2021 academic year. In that period, Black students represented 4% of students in LAAB-accredited programs, according to annual-report data cited in the thesis. That figure should be read as historical study context, not as a current national estimate. The work was not a longitudinal retention study and did not attempt to count every Black student or professional in the country.
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| Study detail | What it means |
|---|---|
| 97 survey respondents | Black students represented in Belk’s survey sample |
| 28 LAAB-accredited programs | The programs from which survey responses were drawn |
| Eight in-depth interviews | Detailed accounts used alongside survey and open-ended responses |
| 47% response rate | The response rate reported for the survey |
| 4% in 2020–2021 | Share of students in LAAB-accredited programs in the thesis’s enrollment context; not a current statistic |
The American Society of Landscape Architects recognized the project with a 2023 Student Award, Honor Award in Research. That recognition signals the study’s contribution, but it does not change its sample, dates or limitations.
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How Black students discover landscape architecture
Discovery was uneven rather than following a standard recruiting funnel. Students described encountering the field while studying in another discipline, through books, through neighborhood gardeners and through personal interests. These routes show why a student may be well suited to landscape architecture yet never encounter its name, degree requirements or career options during the years when college plans are forming.
Exposure can be accidental
A student who finds landscape architecture only after entering another major is making a late switch that may involve extra coursework, financial pressure or uncertainty about professional pathways. A book, a garden or an individual mentor can open the door, but relying on chance leaves many potential applicants outside the field’s reach.
Pre-college contact broadens the starting point
The thesis therefore treats high-school partnerships and pre-college learning as equity measures, not merely recruitment tactics. Workshops, site-design projects, campus visits and sustained relationships with schools can explain what landscape architects do before students have committed to a college major. Programs should present the discipline as connected to housing, public health, ecology, climate adaptation, cultural landscapes and community decision-making, rather than as an unfamiliar specialty with a narrow professional image.
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What students encounter when choosing and entering programs
Belk’s research examines program selection and academic navigation, but it does not rank schools or identify a single best admissions model. Participants’ accounts instead illuminate how representation and institutional climate shape whether a program feels navigable after enrollment.
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Representation affects belonging and guidance
Participants discussed a lack of faculty who looked like them. That gap can affect both belonging and access to informal knowledge: how to approach studio critiques, find internships, select electives, prepare a portfolio or understand professional licensure. The study presents this as a theme in participants’ accounts, not as an identical experience for every Black student.
Being the only Black student can intensify isolation
The thesis describes the possibility of isolation and pressure when a student is the only Black student in a class. A student may feel expected to represent an entire community, explain racial issues during critiques or monitor how their work is received. Others may experience a supportive cohort, strong peer relationships or a faculty ally. Equity work must make room for both realities instead of assuming that every student wants the same mentor, affinity group or form of support.
Curriculum signals whose landscapes matter
Belk recommends reworking landscape-architecture curricula to be less white and Eurocentric. This recommendation concerns what students study, whose design traditions are treated as authoritative and which communities appear in case studies. A broader curriculum can include Black designers and scholars, African and diasporic landscape traditions, Indigenous and local knowledge, environmental-justice projects and community-led work. Adding names to a reading list is not enough if studio briefs, evaluation criteria and histories continue to treat one tradition as the default.
Why a single “Black student experience” is the wrong frame
Belk explicitly emphasizes cognitive and experiential diversity among Black landscape-architecture students. Students differ by geography, class, age, nationality, gender, disability, previous education, family knowledge of higher education and relationship to the profession. Some may seek identity-based mentoring; others may prioritize technical guidance, financial support, community partnerships or a chance to work on a particular ecological problem.
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That variation changes how institutions should evaluate equity efforts. A program should ask students what support is useful, offer multiple entry points and check whether services reach commuters, transfer students, first-generation students and students balancing employment or caregiving. Treating “Black students” as a single constituency can reproduce the exclusion an initiative is intended to address.
Recommendations across the education-to-practice pipeline
The thesis’s recommendations span three connected stages. They are informed proposals from a qualitative study, not interventions tested head-to-head, so institutions should measure their own results rather than assume that one approach will work everywhere.
1. Build pre-college partnerships
- Partner with high schools, community organizations and youth environmental programs for recurring design and ecology activities.
- Introduce students to landscape architecture careers, degree structures, portfolios, financial aid and paid work—not just a one-day presentation.
- Invite practicing designers and current students with varied backgrounds so participants see more than one route into the field.
- Track who is reached, who applies and who enrolls, while protecting students’ privacy.
2. Rework curriculum and teaching practice
- Audit history, theory and studio content for overreliance on white and Eurocentric precedents.
- Teach projects involving racialized infrastructure, environmental injustice, public space access and community sovereignty alongside conventional canonical examples.
- Use transparent critique criteria and explain how cultural context, research and community accountability affect design decisions.
- Compensate guest critics and community partners for their expertise instead of treating lived experience as free instructional labor.
3. Increase professional-development mentorship
- Connect students with mentors who can explain internships, portfolios, networking, licensure and workplace expectations.
- Offer more than one mentoring format, such as individual advising, peer groups, alumni panels and paid project placements.
- Make the relationship reciprocal and voluntary; students should be able to change mentors without penalty.
- Evaluate whether mentoring improves preparedness and clarity about next steps, rather than counting meetings alone.
Belk summarizes the aim this way: “Primary recommendations to equitably diversify the landscape architecture field include cultivating high school partnership/pre-college learning, reworking landscape architecture curricula to be less white/Eurocentric, and increasing mentorship for professional development to decrease the number of Black landscape architecture students who are unsure of their career path and increase their preparedness to take the next step in their journey.”
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Programs can assign responsibility by timing, service and provider. The categories below organize the thesis’s recommendations; they do not establish which response is most effective.
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| When support occurs | What it provides | Who can deliver it | Useful checks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before college | Exposure to design, ecology, careers and degree pathways | Landscape-architecture programs, schools, community groups | Participation, applications and enrollment by demographic and access context |
| Recruitment and admission | Clear information, financial guidance and welcoming outreach | Departments, admissions offices, professional organizations | Yield, transfer patterns and student-reported clarity |
| During the degree | Representative curriculum, inclusive critiques, advising and peer connection | Faculty, program leaders, student services | Climate surveys, progression, course completion and feedback on belonging |
| Transition to practice | Mentoring, internships, portfolio support and licensure information | Employers, alumni, professional organizations and faculty | Paid-placement access, preparedness and employment pathways |
Data should be disaggregated enough to reveal unequal outcomes without reducing students to numbers. Qualitative feedback is essential: a stable enrollment rate can conceal isolation, unpaid labor or students leaving because they do not see a future in the profession.
What the broader workplace evidence adds—and does not add
The Landscape Architecture Foundation’s 2019 diversity, equity and inclusion surveys provide a related professional context, but they are separate from Belk’s student sample. More than 550 individuals and 49 firms responded. Among individual respondents, 50% reported workplace barriers to diversity, and 17% reported feeling alone in their identities at work to some degree.
Those figures suggest why professional-development support and workplace climate matter after graduation. They do not show that the same percentages apply to students, nor do they prove that any particular campus intervention causes better employment outcomes. Education and employment should be connected in planning, while their evidence remains clearly distinguished.
A current example of combined support
The Landscape Architecture Foundation describes its Ignite program as a multi-year initiative for BIPOC college students. The program includes an annual $10,000 scholarship, paid summer internships and mentors; its page lists six students selected for the 2026–2027 cohort.
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Ignite illustrates how financial aid, paid experience and advising can be combined rather than offered as isolated services. It is an example of support, not evidence that the program produced the patterns in Belk’s study or that it resolves structural barriers across the field. Programs using a similar model should publish eligibility rules, compensation, mentor expectations and outcomes so students can assess the opportunity realistically.
Limits readers should keep in view
Belk notes that credible demographic data on landscape-architecture faculty and licensed professionals were not available for the study. Incomplete survey responses from students at one historically Black college or university also affected which perspectives were represented. The sample, response rate and interview design provide meaningful insight, but they cannot establish national prevalence, causal relationships or trends after 2020–2021.
The thesis calls for further research on retention, mentorship needs, program climate and differences between HBCUs and predominantly white institutions. Until that work is available, responsible reporting should use phrases such as “the study reports” and “participants described,” keep the academic-year date beside the 4% figure and avoid converting themes into claims about all Black students.
What equity requires from each stakeholder
Students and prospective students
Students can seek programs that explain curriculum, costs, studio culture, mentoring and paid opportunities clearly. Speaking with current students, alumni and faculty from different backgrounds may reveal differences between a brochure’s promises and daily experience. No student should have to educate an institution about racism in order to receive ordinary academic support.
Program leaders and faculty
Leaders should publish measurable goals, fund pre-college relationships, review curriculum and create confidential channels for climate feedback. Faculty can diversify examples and critics, explain evaluation standards and refer students to paid professional-development opportunities. Accountability belongs to the institution, not to the few Black students who may be asked to serve on every committee.
Professional organizations and employers
Organizations and firms can expand paid internships, offer transparent mentoring and examine who receives project visibility, recommendations and licensure support. Workplace climate surveys should be paired with action plans and follow-up, not treated as a substitute for change.
Equity in landscape architecture is therefore a pipeline and climate issue: people need a chance to discover the field, see themselves and their communities represented in its knowledge, receive support through training and enter workplaces where they are not isolated. Belk’s study makes that case through a specific, dated set of student accounts while leaving room for the diversity of experiences those accounts reveal.
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