Applications
Students earn 6 University of Oregon credits while living and learning for four weeks at Overlook, a 400-acre property in northeastern Pennsylvania designed by the Olmsted Brothers firm in the early twentieth century, and currently being re-imagined by the fourth-generation owners and Nelson Byrd Woltz landscape architects. The summer field school at Overlook offers students a unique opportunity to live, study and create on an evolving cultural landscape. With faculty and a visiting artist in residence, students examine the enduring connections between landscape, culture, and production.
The fully-funded program includes multi-day site visits to New York. Weekly activities include design charettes, fieldwork, seminars, expert speakers, and site visits to regional cultural and productive sites.
Michael Geffel teaches the preparatory spring seminar
Liska Chan manages the Overlook Field School and co-teaches the summer courses with the scholars and artists in residence.
Mary Polites and Ignacio Lopez Buson will be the designers in residence for 2023
The application deadline for priority consideration is February 3, 2023. Please contact chan@uoregon.edu for more information if you have interest in the program past this deadline.
2023 Topic: The Working Forest
Work is labor, production, function, and practice. How can a forest work to benefit its inhabitants, its human associates, and its future? The focus of the field school’s work will be the hardwood forest on the Fullers Overlook property. We will seek ways the forest can be productive for itself as well as for the people who steward it. We will do this work through field work, drawing, building in the forest, and ultimately designing. The field school will culminate in an exhibit of design work and proposals for the future of Overlook’s now devastated hardwood forest (a result of an infestation of Emerald Ash Borer).
Studio
The studio uses Overlook as a laboratory to develop designs integrating landscape maintenance. Students draw, design, and build on-site installations that explore how growth, decay, technology, tools, and labor all influence a design’s life in time. Field research and experimentation lead to an exhibit of drawings and speculative maintenance tools, presented at a final show open to the public.
Field Seminar
Through local and regional visits, students will study the designers, theories, and monuments of regional landscapes and landscape architecture. In New York we visit design firms to discuss contemporary practice, and visit urban parks, infrastructure, and institutions.
We also visit gardens and museums in the New York region, including Storm King Art Center and DIA Beacon
2023 Key Program Dates
| Saturday, July 1 | Arrive at Overlook |
| TBD | Classes Start |
| TBD | New York Field Excursion |
| Saturday, July 29 | Final Show |
| Monday, July 31 | Depart Overlook |
Fees and Budget
Airfare, local travel, housing and meals are paid for by the Fuller Initiative. Local travel includes the field excursions, including travel, hotels, admission to required sites, and a meal stipend.
Tuition
Students pay tuition for summer credit hours, according to the Registrar’s fee schedule.
Travel
Students make their own travel arrangements to and from Overlook. A travel subsidy will be deposited to students’ UO accounts. The amount of the subsidy is based on round-trip airfare from Eugene to Scranton, PA, one checked bag fee each way, and round-trip shuttle costs from Scranton to Overlook.
Summer Financial Aid
Students are eligible for summer financial aid to assist with tuition. Students should follow the usual application process.
Graduate students with GE appointments may be eligible for a “summer sandwich” tuition waiver. See http://gradschool.uoregon.edu/gtf/summer-sandwich for information on the waiver.
Graduate students may be eligible for a graduate research subsidy through the Fuller Initiative; applications and process will be sent to all interested students in winter term.
Application Process and Schedule
Admission is through the Landscape Architecture department, and considers academic standing and GPA, as well as relevance of the program to the student’s area of study. Completion of the LA 4/539 studio sequence (or equivalent) is a prerequisite for the field school.
Submit your application and supplemental materials (2-4 images of sample work) online.
| February 3 | Application deadline for the summer program. Applications are accepted by the faculty director, and are considered as they are completed. |
| February 10 | All students will be notified of their acceptance status. |
| February 17 | Student confirmation of offer. All students who are accepted to the program must confirm their participation. |
If there is a waiting list, students will be accepted from the waiting list following the February 17th confirmation deadline. Those students will then have two weeks to confirm their participation.