The College of Environment and Design at UGA is proud to announce that Professors Katherine Melcher and Alfie Vick have been accepted into the inaugural cohort of the Rural Engagement Faculty Workshop series sponsored by the Office of the Vice-President for Public Service and Outreach (PSO). The initiative connects academic faculty with rural research interests to public service faculty with community connections throughout Georgia.
Katherine Melcher’s proposed research will address how landscape architecture – predominantly an urban profession – can benefit people in rural areas. She says, “Landscape interventions in rural communities appear to be mostly limited to high-end estate design or regional planning and preservation efforts. But I believe that skills and knowledge of landscape architects – such as their ability to analyze the physical environment from multiple perspectives, synthesize this knowledge, and develop creative proposals for functional and inspirational places – could be of use to communities in rural Georgia.” Melcher plans to explore a deeper understanding of the needs of rural Georgians through surveys, interviews and focus groups with UGA PSO partners and citizen leaders to determine where community needs and landscape architecture overlap.
Alfie Vick seeks to understand how the needs of rural communities can inform the design of publicly accessible greenspace. “There is a general assumption that rural communities are surrounded by nature and therefore do not have the same need for public greenspace,” he says. “However, I suspect that many individuals in rural communities are in fact underserved by access to nature.” Vick hypothesizes that while some citizens may have access to large swaths of private land, not all rural residents do, and woodland areas and large yards do not provide the same benefits as public gathering spaces do. Vick plans to partner with Greg Huber (BLA ‘96, MLA ’20), Public Service Professional with UGA Extension at the UGA Griffin Campus, in order to access community participants in his research study.
Read the full press release here.
