The Landscape of Success - Legendary Teaching

Utah State University has a tradition of caring, sharing faculty. Across campus the personal touch influences the lives of students every day. Over the years, a few — let’s call them legendary teachers — rise to the top. They inspire students from the past, present and well into the future.

So strong is the feeling about landscape architecture and environmental planning professor Craig Johnson that when he announced his retirement, plans were laid to continue his educational influence for students to come. As a department promotional piece said, “the department wants to keep Craig going … and going … and going.”

 

With that intent, the Craig Johnson Fund for Excellence was established.

 

“Even if we can’t have his smiling presence, insights and string of one-liners with us, we want Craig’s contributions to LAEP to live in perpetuity,” a brochure announcing Johnson’s retirement said.  “The Craig Johnson Fund for Excellence was established to make sure that happens.”

 

The fund will provide resources to extend the learning experience for USU’s  landscape architecture students. The endowed fund will bring experts to campus for lectures and workshops  in the areas of professor Johnson’s expertise.

 

Johnson joined USU’s Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning faculty in 1966, fresh out of graduate school where he’d just earned a master’s of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois. Earlier he’d earned his bachelor’s in landscape architecture from Michigan State University. His journey into the realm of landscape architecture and design was serendipitous, he said.

 

“I grew up in a small town in Minnesota that had what was called a lyceum series — noted speakers on a variety of subjects would come to town and present lectures,” Johnson said. “My mother, always interested in education and learning about as many subjects as possible, attended a lecture by the director of the Minnesota Arboretum. He used the term ‘landscape architecture,’ and mother came home and repeated it. I had never heard it before, but I was intrigued. I started to explore. Before you knew it, I was on the campus at Michigan State and into the landscape architecture program there.”

 

Johnson said the discipline combines many of his interests — art, wildlife, the landscape and conservation.

 

“The profession said something to me,” he said.

 

Did it ever. Over the years Johnson shared his passion, experience and expertise with countless students. An estimate provided by USU’s LAEP department said he has touched the lives of nearly 1,400 program graduates. His work in habitat restoration and sustainable landscape design had a profound impact in communities, but also through the students who have spread his valuable teaching throughout the country and around the world.

 

Never one to stop learning, Johnson returned to graduate school, and in 1984 he earned a master’s of science in fisheries and wildlife biology from South Dakota State University.

 

“It was something I always want to know more about,” Johnson said. “Adding a background in fisheries and wildlife biology opened opportunities to collaborate with other resource professionals on campus, opportunities to work on a variety of resource related projects.”

 

He combined his several loves and traditional foundation in planning and design into what he called a “hybrid” career.

 

“Our discipline is practical and applied,” he said. “We put things into practice. We need a lot of information — the best and most useful often generated by other disciplines — then combine everything into real-world applications.”

 

USU’s LAEP program began in 1939 with a defection. A department history reports that at the end of spring term 1939, four students and an assistant professor of landscape architecture packed their bags and equipment and moved the only program in landscape architecture in the Intermountain West from BYU to Utah State Agricultural College. The relocated department opened its doors for business in Logan fall term 1939 and fielded its first graduating class — 50 percent male and 50 percent female (there were two graduates) — in June 1940.

 

That’s the early history. Today, the program is vigorous, and alumni work around the world in public, private and academic practice.

 

Johnson, as noted, has worked with thousands of students. With a 40-plus year career and with that many students, project upon project stack up. Among his favorites? The early work on the Jordan River Parkway in Salt Lake County.

 

“We were on the ground floor with the planning process,” Johnson said. “You can go there today and see what the students proposed and suggested in the design, layout and use. I’m really proud of the students’ work. Today, the Jordan River Parkway is a reality. We restored habitat for wildlife and created a memorable place for people.”

 

Other project highlights for Johnson include an open space plan for the City of Bluffdale and a habitat conservation study at the southern end of Cache County.

 

The key to Johnson’s teaching success?

 

“It’s best to teach by example,” he said. “Stay current, get out in the field and work in the profession. Bring ideas back to the classroom. Successful teaching is a combination of applied research, staying current using solid ‘people’ skills” and being passionate about your subject.”

 

Oh, and it has to be fun. “Enjoy what you are doing. That is key.”

 

And what have the students said about Johnson and his teaching?

 

 

 

 

 

So, it’s goodbye and congratulations to Craig Johnson, but his influence will continue through the Craig Johnson Fund for Excellence.

 

“I’ve been able to see former students doing amazing things, making a difference in the world, creating better, more sustainable environments,” Johnson said. “After all, we’ve got to be responsible citizens and stewards of the amazing landscape gift we’ve been given.”

 

That’s teaching by example.

 

For information on the Craig Johnson Fund for Excellence, contact USU’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, (435) 797-0501, or write: USU/LAEP, 4005 Old Main Hill, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-4005.

 

Writer: Patrick Williams, (435) 797-1354