Second-year PhD student Izzy Shehab (MS/MLA ’23) is a long-time student at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), staying in the school to get her PhD after obtaining her Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) and Master of Science in Ecosystem Science and Management (ESM) in 2023. Before coming to U-M, Shehab earned her undergraduate degree from Iowa State University where she studied global resource systems with a focus on horticulture. 

“I was interested in the intersection between global sustainability and plants, which is how I found the MLA and ESM degrees at SEAS,” said Shehab, who was drawn to the "interdisciplinary work that is possible at SEAS.” 

Shehab noted that when first looking at master’s programs she only looked at schools that offered Master of Science degrees. “It wasn’t until I had a phone call with my advisor at SEAS that I realized the MLA was even a possibility for me as someone with no design or art background. So, I was really attracted to the idea that I could study both the design and the ecology side of my interests at SEAS.”

As a master’s student, Shehab decided to complete a thesis to see how she felt about the research process and to help her decide if a PhD would align with her goals. Her master’s thesis was on green stormwater infrastructure in Detroit. Shehab was mostly interested in community members’ perceptions of proposed and existing green stormwater infrastructure and how that related to their experiences with urban flooding and depressive symptoms. 

Having had a rewarding experience doing research at the master’s level, Shehab was drawn to the PhD program at SEAS and hoped to continue her work bridging ecology, landscape design and public engagement. “It’s very rare for landscape architecture programs to be in a school that isn’t focused on design, architecture or urban planning, but instead on science and the environment more broadly. Working on projects with people who are entomologists, landscape architects, sociologists and data scientists is a fascinating way to approach a project so it can be more applied and translatable to the real world, so it is great that interdisciplinary science is valued by SEAS.”

Now, Shehab’s research is focused on front yard pollinator gardens and how their implementation can benefit people and native invertebrate species in an urban setting. In addition to working with MLA faculty member Joan Nassauer, Shehab’s work fits into a broader National Science Foundation-funded project led by entomologist Mary Gardiner at The Ohio State University. Gardiner’s team focuses their research on how these gardens will impact the health of native bees, while Nassauer, Shehab and other team members are focusing on the human impact and perceptions of front yard pollinator gardens. 

“In my personal life, I spend a lot of time propagating and installing native plants in my home landscape and for friends and clients, and I’m excited that this project is giving me the skills to think about how to scale this up and connect more people to plant and animal communities in their own local landscapes,” reflected Shehab. “I like to say that I work at the intersection of ecology, design and social science, and this project perfectly encapsulates all three of those for me.”