LAND Professor Emerita Honored with ASLA Teaching Award

LeBleu, who retired in May after 22 years in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA), received the 2025 ASLA Jot D. Carpenter Teaching Medal. Established in 2000, the national award celebrates the legacy of Jot D. Carpenter, FASLA, a professor at The Ohio State University whose commitment to teaching shaped generations of landscape architects. The medal is given to educators who have made sustained and significant impacts on their students, programs and the profession.

LeBleu views the recognition as a shared achievement, crediting her mentors, colleagues and students who guided, inspired and challenged her throughout her career.

“Teaching has never been just a profession for me—it is a calling, a chance to shape lives and to be shaped myself in return,” she said. “Every day in the classroom reminds me that learning is a shared journey, and I have grown just as much from my students as I hope they have grown from me.”

Throughout her career, LeBleu has advanced education and research in coastal planning and design, water quality and low-impact development, combining design excellence with environmental stewardship. A member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and a fellow of both ALSA and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), she has served as a past CELA president and as the editor-in-chief of Landscape Journal and Landscape Research Record.

“Charlene has made an undeniable and lasting impact on both the Landscape Architecture programs and the broader discipline,” said Emily Knox, Associate Professor and chair of the Landscape Architecture graduate program. “Her decades of dedicated service to the university and the field are reflected in the many leadership roles she held—program chair, interim school head, editor (amongst others)—in her wide network of interdisciplinary collaborators, and in the countless students and alumni for whom she went above and beyond to mentor.”

LeBleu is also a recipient of the 2020 Auburn University Woman of Distinction Award, recognized for her leadership and mentorship, which is apparent in her teaching philosophy.

“Teaching is powerful because it plants seeds of curiosity, resilience and possibility,” she said. “If even one student leaves my class believing more in their own potential, then I know I have done my job well.”

Even though LeBleu has retired, she is still committed to landscape architecture education.

“Education is more than just learning facts or passing exams—it is the foundation that shapes who we are and who we have the potential to become,” she said. “Landscape architecture education gives us the ability to question, to imagine and to create solutions that impact not only our own lives but also the lives of those around us.”