Students

Designing Place, Designing Policy: Jesus Nava ’23 B Arch
Jesus Nava was born in Sinaloa, Mexico, and grew up in San Diego, California. He was drawn to UArizona and the Bachelor of Architecture because of the beauty of the Sonoran Desert and its many outdoor recreation opportunities—as well as UArizona’s “great basketball program.”

UArizona Undergraduate Architecture Students Focus on Universal Design for Prize Funded by AGM and Ascension Wheelchair Lifts
For the third year in a row, UArizona architecture students participated in a universal design competition that put their creative and analytical skills to the test on a significantly sloped site. Thanks to AGM Container Controls and Ascension Wheelchair Lifts, the winning students received a total of $7,400 in prizes.

Community Found and Community Created: Julia Smith ’26 B Arch
Julia Smith isn’t your typical design student, and for Puente—the Hispanic student organization of CAPLA that she recently led—that’s a good thing. Though Smith is a second-year Bachelor of Architecture student, she’s six years older than most of her classmates. She’s also married to a member of the U.S. military.

Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Students Create Exterior Concepts for New South Tucson Coffee Shop
Under the guidance of landscape architecture lecturers Alexandra Stoicof and Nolan Bade, 19 students in a fall 2022 BLA design studio created concepts for a new coffee shop coming soon to South Tucson: Luna y Sol Cafe.

Award-Winning Heritage Conservation Efforts by CAPLA Faculty and Students Lead to $4.6M in State Restoration Funding for Buffalo Soldier Camp
CAPLA Heritage Conservation Program Project Director Helen Erickson and graduate students Sarah McDowell and Teresa DeKoker have been instrumental in efforts to preserve Camp Naco, a borderlands Buffalo Soldier camp located near Bisbee, Arizona, resulting in awards for their story map and new funding to preserve the site.

CAPLA Student-Faculty Team Uses GIS to Create Digital Atlas and Award-Winning Poster of Historical Buddhist Sites in Hangzhou, China
This spring, MS Urban Planning student Glenn Ingram, recent MLA graduate Mattea Wallace and Associate Professor Philip Stoker, working with UArizona East Asian Studies Professor Jiang Wu, created the “Regional Religious Systems in Hangzhou China” story map using GIS. This fall, Ingram's poster from the project won an award.

UArizona Landscape Architecture Students Partner with AIA Southern Arizona for Park(ing) Day 2022
For Park(ing) Day 2022, members of the American Society of Landscape Architecture UArizona student chapter partnered with the American Institute of Architects Southern Arizona to temporarily repurpose parking spaces on downtown Tucson’s Congress Street as a “pop-up” parklet.

Sustainable Scandinavian Pursuits: Zsalina Allen ’23 MS Urban Planning
This summer, graduate student Zsalina Allen participated in a sustainable transportation study abroad program in Denmark and Sweden. She documented her travels in a fascinating and entertaining blog. We followed up to learn more about her experience in Scandinavia, as well her UArizona MS Urban Planning experience.

CAPLA Graduate Students Bring Sights and Sounds of the Sonoran Desert to Austin for SXSW
“For thousands of years, the beauty of the Sonoran Desert has invoked wonder among its human inhabitants,” says Hunter Lohse when introducing the Sonoran Soundscape project that he and fellow MLA students Alizabeth Potucek and Christian Galindo created with Assistant Music Professor Yuanyuan (Kay) Le for the UArizona Wonder House at South by Southwest in March.

Award-Winning Report by CAPLA Urban Planning Students Envisions Equitable, Accessible Public Transportation for Underdeveloped Corridors in Tucson
Last spring, Master of Science in Urban Planning students in Associate Professor Kristina Curran's capstone course published the report Thriving Transit Corridors: Driving Transit-Oriented Development Along Tucson’s Broadway Corridor, which has been awarded the 2022 Student Project Award by the Arizona chapter of the American Planning Association.

CAPLA Launches Interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts in Design Arts and Practices with Emphasis Areas in Object and Space
CAPLA's School of Architecture has partnered with the School of Art and School of Information to offer a new, transdisciplinary undergraduate degree: the Bachelor of Arts in Design Arts and Practices. CAPLA coordinates two of the degree's four emphasis areas: Object Design and Spatial Design.

Award-Winning Student Map Aims to Help Southern California City Plant a Sustainable Future
Recent Master of Landscape Architecture student Irene Pineda has won first place in the graduate/professional student category of the UArizona 2022 Data Visualization Challenge for her map Plant Trees in Pomona for a Sustainable Future. Her map identifies where trees should be planted to provide more shading in the rapidly industrializing Southern California city.
