Gene Bressler, FASLA

Bio

Professor Emeritus Gene Bressler, FASLA served as head of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from 2006-2018 when he retired.  He was appointed Interim Department Head for the Department during the 2022-23 academic year.

During his tenure as department head, Professor Bressler led the faculty and students in initiatives that resulted in:

• Building strong relationships with the professional community including initiation of the department’s Lecture Series and the Student/Practitioner Mentor Program.
• Awarding and naming 3 LAEP Professors as University Faculty Scholars.
• Revising the MLA graduate curriculum.
• Leading two successful reaccreditation processes of the MLA program that earned many accolades and “no recommendations affecting accreditation”.
• Implementing the department’s award-winning Design + Build program.
• Receiving numerous national and regional awards from the American Society of Landscape Architecture for student and faculty achievements in planning and design.
• Developing annual releases of the MLA Handbook.

Appointed by Governor Bev Perdue, Bressler served on North Carolina Board of Landscape Architects from 2009 to 2013.

Prior to joining NC State Bressler served as Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Colorado, Denver (1997-2006). His research and teaching activities focused on urban growth, sustainable development, and planning and design strategies challenging sprawling suburban development.  For several years, he co-taught an annual series of advanced interdisciplinary/collaborative graduate design studios, “Challenging Suburbia,” with architecture Professor Keith Loftin that explored design alternatives to existing residential community development paradigms.  In 2003, he was named director of the Colorado Center for Sustainable Urbanism responsible for conceiving and directing interdisciplinary public conferences, Colorado Tomorrow (2004 and 2005), addressing population growth, demographic dynamics, and urban development challenges and opportunities facing the state.

Bressler taught at the University of Oregon, Eugene from 1971-85.  His teaching and research activities pioneered digital landscape suitability modeling technologies addressing urban development opportunities and constraints, infrastructure strategies and costs, and potential environmental impacts informing alternative urban planning design and development strategies.  This led to his accepting a position, as marketing/sales director and regional manager with Dynamic Graphics, Inc., Alameda CA (1984-1995), the developer of internationally recognized software used in numerous modeling and visualization in terrain, natural resource, national defense, and land use planning applications.

In 2006, Bressler was named the recipient of the Outstanding Administrator of the Year by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA).  He was elevated to Fellow by the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2008.  In 2010, he delivered the College of Design’s Fall Commencement address, “Game Changing One’s Way to the Main Thing.”  In recognition of his “major achievements for the advancement of the profession” the North Carolina Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (NCASLA) named him the recipient of the 2017 President’s Council Award.

In 2018, the College of Design established, the Eugene H. Bressler Landscape Architecture Faculty Award Endowment that “provides funds to ensure extraordinary research, teaching and outreach opportunities for faculty academic enrichment.”