The Conway School: Courses, Admission, Cost

Conway School, situated in Conway, Massachusetts is a graduate school for Landscape Planning and Design. The school was established in 1972 and is spread across a vast area of 24.5 acres. The graduate institute provides a Master of Science degree in Ecological Design.

The institution accepts around 20 students every year into its ten-month program. The school was established by Walter Cudnohofsky, the landscape planner and architect. The agenda of the school is to teach, explore, practice, and develop a design that is socially and ecologically sustainable. The program lays emphasis on community building and communication skills. Students of the school work with real clients on real projects at varying scales, from urban planning and management to residential landscaping of entire watersheds. The projects and curriculum are designed to provide graduates with basic skills and knowledge to practice management, planning, and design of the land that respects human needs as well as nature, develop respect, ecological awareness, understanding, and accommodation in the institute’s students and project clients.

The school is headed by academic director Ken Byre and administrative director Priscilla Novitt. To attain the degree, a student must exhibit an understanding of design theory, professional practice, natural and built environments, and design communication. The school’s students learn from the faculty, guest professionals in varied fields, team building, and survey of their project sites and the communities where those project sites are implanted. The program is interdisciplinary and completely consolidated; class assignments like written, graphic and technical, support the project work.

The program also caters to regular field trips, weekly guest lectures on important and relevant topics like environmental justice, environmental law for wildlife habitat, and green building design. The school also organizes field sessions led by an Ecology professor to a closely located place of interest like a dam removal site, a constructed wetland, an innovative parking lot, and a quaking bog.