Emily Yatron is currently a returning student senior here at Delaware Valley University, getting her second degree in Landscape Architecture with a minor in Environmental Science. She already has a degree from Kutztown University in Graphic Design and decided to further her education in Landscape Architecture at DelVal. Emily has been here for three years and has done a lot at DelVal when it comes to the Experience 360 Program credits. She has done a Global Studies trip, one internship that counts for credits and two for her own personal experience, and she has also completed the leadership portion of E360 as she is now the president of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).
Emily describes the Global Field Study she did as a “mini study abroad”. She and the members of the ASLA club went to San Diego for 10 total days to attend an architecture conference that lasted four days and spent the rest of the time sightseeing in an educational way. She said that this trip counted towards the E360 credits that she needed to complete and she also took a semester-long class doing research and writing papers. During the conference, she and her club got to meet other students from different ASLA clubs around the country and gain networking experience in the landscape architecture industry.
“We got to talk to a lot of professionals and attend really fascinating lectures and conferences,” Emily says. She also said they saw a few botanical gardens in the San Diego area and had some connections to get them private tours, during which they were told all about the different plants they saw and other educational landscape information. She said that the conference part of the trip “was incredibly useful… and great to tell a future employer that I’ve been to the ASLA conference,” as it was able to zero her in on the types of landscape architecture she wants to do in her career. It is such a broad industry, but this conference and Global Field Studies opportunity was very useful for her.
Emily also has done a few internships while she was a student at DelVal. Only one of them counted as part of her E360 credits and that was an internship at a local landscape architecture firm in Norristown. It was a small firm where she was able to do some graphic design work and some landscaping work alongside her coworkers. She also worked at Burpee Farms during the summer where she was doing a lot of hands-on work with plants and the landscape.
“It was very physically demanding and I wasn’t prepared for how much work it was going to be,” she said. But she had some of her best experiences there when she was weeding, planting fruits and vegetables and flowers and harvesting them at the end of the season. Emily is currently doing an internship now at Castle Valley Consultants, an engineering firm where she helps design wastewater systems for local areas. She is really enjoying this internship because she is very into sustainability and this opportunity allows her to learn about both the technical side of landscape architecture and environmental sustainability has been a great experience.
DelVal has a ton of opportunities to fulfill the E360 requirement if you are able to take advantage of your connections and ask the school to work with you and that’s exactly what Emily Yatron did. She had some great experiences that furthered her college career and life goals here at DelVal while also completing required credits to graduate. It’s simple to do both so be like Emily and get the Full360! For more information about pursuing a Global Field Studies or internship opportunity, you can reach out to the Center for Student Professional Development (CSPD) at cspd@delval.edu
Written by: Miller Huertgen