By jmccrory | Posted August 23, 2018 |
Maddie Clark, Ball State University senior landscape architecture major from Shelbyville, Indiana, recently received the Udall Scholarship, an award that recognizes the nation's top 50 sophomores and juniors interested in environmental issues.
"To be selected to receive this scholarship among such a high caliber of people is very rewarding and humbling," Clark said. "With the financial assistance this scholarship offers, I can focus on learning about and addressing the ecological problems I am most interested in within the Muncie, Indiana, community and around the country."
Her dedication to helping create ecological infrastructure that connects people to the environment in urban settings, with a focus on water systems and the impact of climate change, was the key component of her application.
"For me, this passion began when I started to see landscape architecture less as a future job and more as an opportunity to help weave a new narrative about how communities can restore their ecological and cultural value," said Clark, one of two Ball State students to receive a Udall Scholarship. "Ultimately, I am passionate about tackling our most degraded environments to create livable and dynamic communities that suffer most from environmental disasters."
In addition to receiving the $7,000 scholarship, she spent Aug. 7-12 in Tucson, Arizona, participating in the Udall Scholar Orientation. At this conference, scholarship recipients worked together on a case study and met with other Udall scholars, Udall alumni and professionals working on environmental issues.
"In the case study, we divided into different stakeholder teams and negotiated and compromised with each other on water allocation within our given watershed. In an age where drought is very common, the amount of water a community receives is a problem many areas in the west deal with every day," Clark said. "It was great to lean how this is a growing issue and how communities can begin to work with each other to conserve water and improve water quality."
She recently spent five months in New York City at SCAPE, a landscape architecture firm committed to connecting people back to their environment and creating dynamic and adaptive landscapes to make communities more resilient to climate change. Clark worked on several projects that focused on rethinking current infrastructure.
On campus, Clark is the president of Emerging Green Builders and is president of the GROW campus garden. Her volunteer activities include the 8-Twelve Coalition, and her research has taken her to the U.S.-Mexico border.