College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Above ↑ Katie Selin (right) worked with fellow UW-Madison student Katy Bresette to design student housing and community space for the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College.
Preparing for a Lifetime of Change - Learning by design
By earning a degree in landscape architecture, Katie Selin, followed the footsteps of her grandfather, who graduated in the College’s first LA class in the 1940s and then started his own nursery and landscape firm.
The Madison native “grew up running around the nursery,” but her own path took her into areas that weren’t part of landscape architecture 60 years ago. What drew her into the field was the rich diversity
of subject areas that it encompassed — including art, science, math and psychology.
While she found the program to be competitive and rigorous, she thrived on the camaraderie among the group of two dozen students who advanced together through the sequence of courses required for the degree.
She also liked the hands-on learning. She spent part of a summer in Montana, where she worked with a local Boys and Girls Club and helped construct a building on a tribal campus. The following winter she was invited to participate in a new UW-Madison partnership project with the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibway Community College near Hayward. That work evolved into her senior thesis project.
“We were mapping ‘green’ infrastructure. That’s a conservation term describing the natural spaces in a region that are crucial to the ecosystem, such as wetlands and steep slopes,” she says. “The information helps us plan for future development by ensuring that area resources are protected first.”
The project let her hone skills she’d acquired in her classes and get comfortable using the sophisticated technology that is part and parcel of the field.
“I am not a computer person at all,” Selin confesses. “I didn’t know computer-aided design well, but we started using it freshman year, and I now use it for multiple aspects of my studio work.”
She honed those skills by teaching students from the tribal campus how to use global information system technology.
After graduation, she plans to travel, then hopes to find a job in landscape architecture — most likely in environmental education or community design