Environmental Design Student Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship

Lauren Waldroop, a senior in CADC’s Environmental Design program, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to research and study in Germany in the coming academic year. Lauren, who has dual degrees in Environmental Design and German with a double minor in International Business and Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, will study with Professor Jan Pieper in the Department of Architectural History at the Rhine-Westphalia Technical University in Aachen, Germany. She will be part of a team of faculty and students conducting a comparative study of Northern Renaissance and Southern Renaissance architecture in theaters.

“Lauren is the ideal, and to give a nod to her Fulbright award, a true Renaissance student,” says Magdalena Garmaz, program chair of Environmental Design. “Her work ethic is impeccable, her time management exemplary, and her ability to follow up on her ideas with actual execution (papers, proposals, drawings) is without match. I can judge her performance only in regard to the ENVD program, but I can see how, through her work, she connects different disciplines and enriches her learning process. One of the tenants of our Environmental Design program is system thinking, and Lauren has a keen ability to understand and connect different frameworks and their impact on our physical and cultural environment. She has a beautiful and agile mind that quickly moves through, and weaves, different ideas into usable concepts. Lauren loves learning, charting new territories, yet she is always building on her previous knowledge.”

When she’s not a school or work, Lauren can be found having fun with her friends. She goes to the movies often, and loves to go bowling. In the summer, only work can keep her and her friends from the pool. Her favorite books would have to be the Harry Potter series, because they inspired her love for reading; though her favorite genre is historical fiction.

Lauren has a passion for historic preservation that drives her academics. “The Environmental Design program has allowed me to tailor my time at Auburn to really gain the knowledge and skills I will need to go into the field of historic preservation. By allowing the time for my minors, I am better equipped to begin in this field. The program has helped me develop my design thinking and critical thinking skills that I use in every aspect of my academics and my life. Encouragement from my professors allowed me to see that impossible tasks can become possible through hard work and dedication.” After her year in Germany with the Fulbright, Lauren would like to attend a graduate program for Historic Preservation.

Lauren is also an Honors College student, and graduated Cum Laude. She is from Flower Mound, Texas.