Issue5_Fall2015

Who's Who?

Be Inspired What inspired your career in Landscape Architecture? CELTRUDA: As a child working outdoors on a friends farm, the feeling of nature (a fall morning in New England), and my high school art teacher David Belval who introduced me to the profession. EGNATZ: Robert Trent Jones. He is a golf course architect - perhaps the first who went to college with the specific purpose of becoming a golf course architect. I became interested in landscape Architecture in part because I liked this type of design and the course local to where I grew up was designed by Robert Trent Jones. My interests in the profession have since expanded, but I still have a sentimental dream of someday designing (or contributing to the design) of a golf course. HEEB: I worked in construction beginning at age 13 and enjoyed the process of seeing a design turn into a finished product. The integration of art and science found in landscape architecture really spoke to me. HOLTZMAN: It included an upgraded meal plan. KELLEHER: In high school, when looking for colleges I wanted to study architecture, but at the time there was not a single undergraduate architecture program offered in CT. I learned that UConn had a “landscape” architecture program. Although I didn’t really know what that was, I had a love of nature and art. Landscape Architecture seemed like the perfect union of these two interests. SHIBLEY: Trips to Yosemite National Park and Yellowstone National Park. VIOLETTE: Growing up, I thought I would be an Architect. Kind of like George Costanza, I liked the sound of it. I was very much into designing things. Legos probably kick started that. During high school I was drawing floor plans and elevations in CAD. I think I even walked around with blueprints in the back pack to look cool. Yes, I was clueless then too. And then the college search began and the term Landscape Architecture surfaced. I was intrigued about its basis in design (like architecture) but was fascinated about the "open palate" of working with the land. The more I learned the more I was hooked. There were no boundaries and no limits to what was possible (and no budgets in college design). The design process for Landscape Architecture has me hooked and wanting for more.

Dominick Celtrua (Hartford) State University of New York at Cobleskill – Associates in Horticultural Design & State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse

Josh Egnatz (Hartford) Cornell University (ever heard of it?)

Mark Heeb (Camp Hill) Penn State University (undergrad) & University of Georgia (grad)

Greg Holtzman (Camp Hill) Penn State University

Joe Kelleher (Hartford) UCONN

Elliot Shibley (Camp Hill) Penn State University

Wayne Violette (Meriden) U! C! O! N! N! UConn! UConn! UConn!