"Imagining America is a consortium of colleges and universities committed to public scholarship and practice in the arts, humanities, and design. Imagining America supports campus-community partnerships that contribute to local and national civic life while furthering recognition of the value of public scholarship and practice in higher education itself. Each year Imagining America hosts a national conference that engages broader themes as well as the local context of the conference site."

For me and for other planning committee members the words "Imagining America" indicate that things could be otherwise - the ways we work together, the economies we work within, and the boundaries of our fields. These words also indicate something ongoing rather than one-off, something whose starting points are hopeful and whose commitments are long-term.

Landscape Architecture has an important role to play in Imaging America. As I've said elsewhere, design is a way of considering, representing, and constructing relationships between people and places - designers envision, present, and create.

Today brought two examples of how landscape architects inspire and implement sustainable futures. Students for Design Activism, a group of talented and engaged Landscape Architecture students, transformed a parking spot into a park where people could learn about using plants to treating urban runoff before pollution enters waterways like the Mississippi River. UMN MLA alumni Craig Wilson, CEO of Sustology, a sustainability consultancy and UMN MLA Adjunct Assistant Professor and CEO of Murphy Warehouse, Richard Murphy announced plans to transform three of Murphy's warehouses into the largest generators of Minnesota-manufactured solar energy in North America. Parking spots become parks, warehouse roofs become energy generators. Imagine that!

I was reminded of this topic again when a new 1st year graduate student in landscape architecture shared his blog with me - a very thoughtfully written and clear account of his first experiences as a design student. I'm always amazed by the courage it takes to return to school, move to an unfamiliar place, and find your role in a cohort of strangers. His reflections on the first weeks of school reminded me again of exactly what is at stake for many of our incoming students. As someone who is still paying off student loans, I'm reminded of the financial commitment monthly. But I forget the stress of the newness of it all - new apartment to set up, new bureaucratic systems to negotiate, new skills to learn.

Students in my Research Methods class are at the other end of this trajectory: developing what will be their final capstone project and preparing to graduate in the spring. Having mastered a set of skills they are in some ways returning to the reasons they started the program in the first place. What is it about the landscape that they value: the city, a river's edge, a neighborhood, a sidewalk? How can the work of a designer improve lives? What are the strengths of our profession and what are its limits?

In this blog I'll share some thoughts on these questions. Part of the fear of reflection for academics may be that an ongoing record of our answers shows shifts in our thinking and perhaps doubts about what we think is possible. But a shifting account is a more honest account of the processes of teaching and learning, of collaboration and expression set within a constantly changing landscape of money, ethics, and regulation. Just as good research is based on good questions and leads to even better questions, engagement and teaching are shaped and reshaped each time we ask ourselves if what we are doing reflects what we know and what we believe.