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Alumni Awards List

Growing up in a small town taught MARY EPPERSON GOURLAY a lot about community involvement and responsibility toward the community at large--if you didn't do it, it wouldn't get done!

Mary grew up in Clarksville, Missouri, a town with a population of just 500 located one hour north of St. Louis. Since it's easy to do a lot in a small town, she always participated in and volunteered for a wide variety of activities: the mayor's youth council, Hugh O'Brien delegate, music, sports, speech and drama, student government, science club and just about any other club. Upon high school graduation, her academic advisors recommended that her college major be engineering. After visiting a number of schools, Mary realized that field didn't interest her--she enjoyed art and music in addition to mathematics--so, she decided to give architecture a try at K-State.

While completing first-year environmental design courses, Mary learned about the field of landscape architecture. Working with the environment and creating community greatly appealed to her, so she elected to pursue the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture. As a fourth-year landscape architecture student, Mary was fortunate to participate in the College's study abroad program in Italy where she continued to learn more about towns and villages, so she decided to pursue a certificate in community planning as well. While at K-State, Mary was a member of Phi Kappa Phi honor society and Lambda Alpha Sigma landscape architecture honor society. She also received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in their 1994 annual student design competition.

During her final year of study, Mary accepted an internship with EDAW. She spent the first two weeks of the internship camping in the Rocky Mountains with other interns as they studied the Rocky Mountain National Park--its environment, capacity for increasing numbers of visitors, and sustainable practices. The project, "Planning the Green Zone," was awarded a Sustainable Design Award by the Colorado Chapter ASLA. The remainder of the internship was spent in Atlanta, Georgia, where Mary eventually decided to join the company for her first full-time professional job.

Mary worked on more than 22 projects during her first year at EDAW. Some of the most intense and exciting included Centennial Olympic Park and World Golf Village. Yet, Mary still found the time to be involved with the community. She was a member of the Urban Land Institute and Generation Green, and she volunteered for Trees Atlanta and Habitat for Humanity.

After four years in Atlanta, Mary learned of an opening on the West Coast with the SWA Group which came highly recommended. She decided to take the job and rapidly relocated to Sausalito, California. Her professional work at the SWA Group varies in scope from planting design to land planning, yet allows Mary to continue to develop her interests in community development and design which considers social dynamics, ecology, and building upon the unique characteristics and opportunities of a given site. Some of her current projects include landscape design for independent and assisted living facilities for seniors on a roughly 19-acre Palo Alto site adjacent to two other in-progress projects--a Ronald McDonald House and Stanford West Apartments. Mary is also providing land planning and landscape architectural services to the developer for the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, closed as a military base in 1993. Mare Island is being redeveloped into a civilian neighborhood for 5,000 residents and 10,000 workers.

Mary is LEED Certified and maintains membership in the Urban Land Institute and the Junior League of San Francisco. She volunteers with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and has run six marathons in support of that organization. Newly married, Mary also likes to spend as much time as possible with husband Doug Gourlay.