Emily Moore – CELA Outstanding Paper Award

Congratulations to Wenk’s Emily Moore! She received a 2024 Outstanding Paper Award under the subject area of “People-Environment Relationships” by CELA (Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture) for her graduate research while at Kansas State University. Her paper, Children’s Contact with Nature in Low-Income Communities: Parents’ and Teachers’ Perspectives, explores how elementary school teachers and parents’ perceptions and attitudes of children’s contact with nature can help inform place-based design recommendations to improve children’s contact with nature.

Research Question
How can parents’ and teachers’ perceptions and attitudes of greenspace accessibility inform recommendations to improve children’s contact with nature?

Importance
There is a need to understand the barriers that prevent children from spending more time in nature during and outside school as children are spending less time in nature in recent years.

Research Findings
Potential factors limiting children’s contact with nature include the number and types of greenspaces, school curriculum, walkability, and safety concerns in the area.

Design Recommendations
Re-envision existing greenspaces, create safe and green routes to school and greenspaces, transform vacant lots, and create policy to support planning for children’s contact with nature

You can find Emily’s research published in CELA’s Landscape Research Record, Vol 13: https://thecela.org/landscape-research-record-no-13/

LANDSCAPE RESEARCH RECORDS (LRR), which are published annually, consist of papers on landscape architecture subject areas. Each issue is a collection of papers presented at the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture annual conference of that year. LRR started in 2013 as a post-conference publication and published online only.