Sam Olarsch Wins the Teuvo Airola Memorial Award in Environmental Geomatics

When I began applying to college, I knew I wanted to contribute to environmental protection in some meaningful capacity. Exploring undergraduate programs introduced me to environmental planning, and I quickly realized that understanding the underlying planning challenges was the first step toward solving them. That initial interest led me to landscape architecture, a field where I could merge my passion for design with my drive to address environmental issues.

I found that if I majored in both fields, some elements in one would inform the other. This idea ultimately led me to geomatics. To me, it was more than an analytical tool; it represented a fundamentally different way of thinking about how land is structured and understood. I immersed myself in geomatics coursework at Rutgers, and that dedication paid off when my team placed second at the 36th NJDEP Mapping Contest for a trout suitability analysis we developed together. This experience carried into the broader work I produced, both for the Rutgers Center for Urban and Environmental Sustainability and during a landscape architecture internship with the Monmouth County Park System, deepening my ability to apply geomatics to real-world planning and design problems.

Following graduation, I will intern at Stone Field Engineering in Asbury Park, gaining further professional experience before beginning my Master of Landscape Architecture at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. There, I look forward to building on the technical foundation and spatial way of thinking that geomatics has given me, applying it to my academics and professional development in the field.