Kenneth Brooks

Biography

Ken Brooks is a professor of landscape architecture at Kansas State University. He holds professional licensure in Kansas and Missouri. He has been teaching for over 25 years. Ken served as the program coordinator at Washington State University and as the director of the graduate program at Kansas State University. His primary areas of expertise and most of his instructional activities are natural resource planning, computing technologies, design education and landscape architectural research methods. He especially enjoys mentoring graduate and advanced undergrad students with research and applied professional scholarship. Among his achievements are integrating computing technology into the design curriculum at KSU. K-State was one of the first programs to have networked computers on each student’s desk in the studio with digital technologies a regular part of almost every course in the curriculum.

Ken is a founding member and former director, vice president and president of Sigma Lambda Alpha, the Landscape Architecture Honor Society. He has also served as president of the Prairie Gateway ASLA Chapter and as a chair of several LAAB accreditation site visitation teams.

His undergraduate degree was completed at Colorado State University in 1974 and his Master’s of Landscape Architecture degree was completed in 1977 at Utah State University, where he taught plant materials as a graduate teaching assistant.

Ken has professional design experience as a consultant and design firm principal. Most professional commissions have been recreation facilities design or large-scale resource planning for private and public clients. He has also been engaged in professional service to his community, currently sitting as the president of the Manhattan, KS Historic Resources Board.

Ken is married and has two daughters. His wife, also a professional educator, was recently recognized as one of the Kansas Teacher of the Year finalists. His recreational interests and social activities include cooking, travel and giving about 25 concerts or performances last year singing with the local barbershop chorus.