Dear President Echambadi and Provost Hudson,
I am writing to express the extreme dissatisfaction, on behalf of the Master of Landscape Architecture students, regarding the abrupt termination of Professor Ron Henderson, in addition to the other profound losses within the School of Architecture. Due to this dissatisfaction, I am asking you to reconsider the decision to eliminate Professor Ron Henderson.
I am currently a Master of Landscape Architecture student who was thriving academically under the direction of three outstanding landscape educators. Last semester, I had the privilege of having Henderson as my studio professor. His unique insights and experiences in landscape, urbanism, and the built environment create powerful shifts in students’ perspectives, enabling more meaningful and realistic projects. Speaking from personal experience, my studio project from this past semester under Henderson’s instruction was the most impactful project I have worked on in my academic career. I know that I am not alone with this view that Henderson has provided invaluable insight and experience within his teaching landscape.
Illinois Institute of Technology’s identity is built around the intersection of technology, design, science, engineering, and the city. Professor Ron Henderson’s research operates directly at that intersection. If the university wants to strengthen its reputation as an institution where disciplines interact rather than exist in isolation, eliminating a professor whose work already crosses those boundaries seems fundamentally counterproductive.
Eliminating Professor Ron Henderson’s position would not simply remove an instructor from a classroom. It would remove a valued faculty member, whose professional and academic network has generated opportunities for Illinois Tech and its students, whose research has brought external recognition and funding to the university, whose work has contributed directly to the physical landscape of the Mies Campus (making the campus itself an educational resource), and whose international reputation strengthens the very professional program in which I am investing my trust, education, and money.
In addition to the extreme loss that would be felt throughout the Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism (MLA+U) program, this loss of a full-time faculty member would place a large burden on our two remaining faculty members regarding studios, mentorship, and academic advising. This decision completely shatters the delicately woven fabric that has been carefully curated in the MLA+U leadership, direction, and teamwork to create a cohesive, supportive, and productive learning environment for the students.
Professor Ron Henderson’s value extends far beyond the classroom, which is evident in his biography on the Illinois Tech College of Architecture’s website: “Professor Henderson is an international leader in landscape architecture design, history, research, and education.
His broad range of research includes: The Driverless City Project, gardens and contemporary urbanism in China and Japan, arboriculture and horticulture practices, botanical drawing, and landscape-based urbanism. He is the author of 30 Trees and Why Landscape Architects Love Them (Birkhauser, 2023), The Gardens of Suzhou (University of Pennsylvania, 2012) and numerous articles on landscape architecture and urbanism. He co-translated into English (with Kou Huaiyun of Tongji University) Peng Yigang’s seminal book, Analysis of the Traditional Chinese Garden.
Professor Henderson is invited to lecture frequently with recent talks at Xi’an University of Architecture and Engineering, Nashville Tree Foundation, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Harvard University, Tongji University, Beijing Forestry University, Oslo AHO, ETSAB Barcelona, Chiba University, Boston University, DESIGNxRI, US National Arboretum, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Graham Foundation, among others. He has held previous appointments at Harvard, Pennsylvania State University, Tsinghua University, and Rhode Island School of Design. Professor Henderson holds a courtesy appointment as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Landscape Architecture at Tsinghua University. He is a former Senior Fellow of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
He and his students have received global recognition for their work.”
Due to the reasons listed above, it has come as such a shock to learn that the university determined that Professor Ron Henderson, with all his accomplishments related to and separate from Illinois Tech, had been egregiously dismissed within the large realm of the institution’s budget cuts. This brash decision to eliminate such an impactful professor, not only to students, but to the university itself, is truly incomprehensible, considering the immense contributions he has made. I am not writing simply because Professor Ron Henderson is an outstanding professor, or because of how much his students appreciate his efforts; I am also writing to express how his record demonstrates that he represents the exact kind of faculty member that Illinois Tech should be fighting to retain. He is an internationally recognized landscape architect with global projects, researcher, author, educator, mentor, multiple grant recipient, and forger of relationships between Illinois Tech and other institutions globally.
As his impact must have slipped your memory, please see below for some of Professor Ron Henderson’s contributions and accolades towards Illinois Tech and the landscape practice as a whole:
• In 2025, Professor Ron Henderson collaborated with Kurato Fujimoto (world-renowned master landscape architect), arborists from the US Capitol Grounds and Arboretum, LIRIO Landscape Architecture, and Illinois Tech students/alumni to preserve the legacy cherry blossom trees (some from the original 1912 gift from Japan) on the grounds of the US Capitol and Library of Congress.
• In 2025, Professor Ron Henderson was one of the main drivers in the implementation of the 33rd Street Prairie on Illinois Tech’s Mies Campus after 25 years of an idea sitting stagnant. This native prairie serves as a living landscape that propels research, community, biodiversity, and a healthy environment forward. The materialization of the native prairie stems from Ron’s Alphawood Arboretum spearheading and funding, as well as the Pizzo Habitat Restoration. The prairie aims to serve as a living landscape, not only for Illinois Tech students and staff, but also for the surrounding Bronzeville community. If you walk past the Paul V. Galvin Library, you cannot miss some of the visible representation of Ron’s impact on Illinois Tech.
• In 2025, Professor Ron Henderson assisted in the research and establishment of the Nate Thomas Memorial Meadow and Budburst Garden on the corner of 33rd Street and Michigan Ave on IIT’s Mies Campus. This is an active community-based garden and ecological research center, which celebrates and honors the legacy of Nathaniel “Nate” Thomas. Nate Thomas established the Early Identification Program for minority recruitment at Illinois Tech, which vastly increased diversity in STEM programs, but sadly passed in 2020. Students, alongside Ron, worked on the creation of the Nate Thomas Memorial Meadow and its integration into the larger campus arboretum structure.
• In 2025, Professor Ron Henderson was nominated as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University’s College of Architecture, after working with Tsinghua for nearly two decades, helping establish its Department of Landscape Architecture, and being the first non-Chinese citizen to serve as full-time faculty in the School of Architecture.
• In 2024, Professor Ron Henderson led his TREES ALIVE! studio to Japan for a collaboration with University of Tokyo Professor Toru Mitani while securing support from a private donor interested in creating a student exchange experience. This led to Ron’s studio receiving a 2025 American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award for Student Collaboration, a publication for Trees Alive, and other national recognition.
• In 2024, Professor Ron Henderson published the book 30 Trees and Why Landscape Architects Love Them, as a compilation of passages from 30 internationally renowned landscape architects and their personal insights on their favorite tree species. On top of this magnificent feat of compiling some of the brightest minds in the profession, five scholarly essays and botanical descriptions of each tree species complement the deeply personal connections to said trees.
• In 2023, Professor Ron Henderson, along with his students, established the Alphawood Arboretum at IIT’s Mies Campus after securing $2 million in funding from the Alphawood Foundation. This feat earned Illinois Tech national accreditation from the ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program. Currently, Ron is spearheading the process to push the campus to Level 2 arboretum status, which requires the campus to have 100 tree species. We are currently just falling short of this, and will fall short of this status if Ron’s departure is upheld.
• In 2022, Professor Ron Henderson, along with the rest of the MLA+U program, was honored by Chicago’s Friends of the Parks with its 2022 Smoky Sakurada Friend of Friends of the Parks Award. This award recognizes special support of the park advocacy organization’s work, which focuses on supporting landscape in disinvested Chicago neighborhoods. Ron continues to exemplify one of his previous statements on this partnership with Chicago’s Friends of the Parks: “(The MLA+U program) is part of a constellation of nonprofit, academic, and government agencies working together toward a more just, equitable, and accessible public realm, especially those where investments have not been particularly strong in the past.”
• In 2019, Professor Ron Henderson was named National Park Service Artist-in-Residence at the Indiana Dunes National Park, while he was Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism program at IIT. His beautiful and unique take on sketching, primarily utilizing accordion-fold Japanese orihon (folding books), is also the subject of the annual Sakura Orihon exhibition at the United States National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. This exhibition coincides with the cherry blossom festival, which Ron has also played a crucial part in preserving, as seen above.
• In 2018, Professor Ron Henderson and his team secured a grant for the Driverless City Project, which is a multi-disciplinary research initiative, gaining awards, recognition, and funding from the National Science Foundation, the Nayar Prize, and the IISG Grant.
• From 2016-2022, Professor Ron Henderson was a Senior Fellow of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, in which he was part of the committee that advises the Director of Dumbarton Oaks in all aspects of research and collection development concerning Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. There have only been 50 senior fellows since the committee was established in 1974.
• In 2012, Professor Ron Henderson was inducted into the class of 2012 American Society of Landscape Architecture Fellows. A fellowship is awarded as a prestigious honorary membership level granted to members of ASLA in recognition of their exceptional contributions to the profession and society at large. Only a small percentage of ASLA members are elevated to the Council of Fellows, as their career achievement, leadership, and impact in design, research, education, and public service are second to none.
• In 2011, Professor Ron Henderson was awarded a Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship, which is funded by the Japan-US Friendship Commission and administered in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
• Additional awards Professor Ron Henderson has received can be found on his directory profile on IIT’s website: https://www.iit.edu/directory/people/ronald-henderson.
• Furthermore, countless of his students have received ASLA student awards under his teaching and mentorship, directly exhibiting how he guides students to push the envelope in landscape architecture and urbanism.
• Professionally, Ron is the founding principal of Lirio, a landscape architecture firm that has been recognized with over 50 international, national, and regional awards for design, planning, preservation, and research.
A few personal anecdotes on his achievements above:
• These projects and collaborations demonstrate something easy to overlook when discussing faculty as budget numbers: Professor Ron Henderson has not merely taught about landscapes at Illinois Tech; he has actively created them here and improved landscapes globally. This distinction is one that truly matters.
• As an MLA+U student, I spend my education learning how landscapes can function as ecological, social, cultural, and educational infrastructure. Having a professor who is actively shaping the landscape of our own campus provides an educational opportunity that cannot be replicated through a textbook or lecture.
• These credentials matter because landscape architecture is a professional discipline; students do not choose an MLA program simply to acquire theoretical and textbook knowledge. We come to learn from those who understand how design, research, ecology, history, technology, public policy, and professional practice intersect in the real world. The full-time MLA faculty members, especially Ron, perfectly embody this intersection.
• Professor Ron Henderson’s work reflects a commitment to Chicago, meticulously connecting and weaving Illinois Tech into the complicated yet robust urban fabric in which we are situated. This is important as Illinois Tech is not simply located in Chicago; it is ingrained in Chicago, despite its historically complicated and arduous relationship with the Bronzeville neighborhood, a relationship which Ron is actively working to repair and bring investment and continued support to.
• Professor Ron Henderson’s teaching and research have helped students engage directly with the city’s neighborhoods, parks, environmental challenges, and public realm. This work demonstrates the civic value of an MLA+U education at Illinois Tech and reflects the university’s stated commitment to interdisciplinary and socially engaged education.
• Through the many connections, projects, and distinctions, Professor Ron Henderson allows his international reputation to strengthen Illinois Tech as a whole and be an institutional asset. Due to his deep personal connections and decade-long international relationships, Illinois Tech is also able to have these international connections through Ron.
• At a time when universities are competing for students, faculty, research partnerships, and international recognition, relationships of this depth are difficult to build; they are developed over years and are sustained by hard-working individuals. Professor Ron Henderson is one of those individuals.
With only some of his achievements listed above, Professor Ron Henderson’s work demonstrates continued value through his actively ongoing research and professional activity; his accomplishments are not merely stagnant and historical in nature. The fact that his professional network continues to generate international academic opportunities for Illinois Tech students demonstrates that his value is not something Illinois Tech has already received and can now discard. This is something the university is continuing to benefit from.
With all this being said, it brings me to the broader question underlying Professor Ron Henderson’s dismissal: what does Illinois Tech believe a valuable professor is worth? Illinois Tech is currently making difficult financial decisions, and I understand that universities face genuine budget pressures and that not every position can necessarily be protected during a restructuring. But if the university is going to make decisions of this magnitude, students deserve to understand the criteria being used. What is the university measuring? Is it simply the cost of a faculty position? It does not appear that the university has considered the research funding a professor attracts, the grants they receive, the external partnerships they maintain, the students they mentor, the professional recognition they bring to the university, the programs they help sustain, and the opportunities they create. As those factors are seemingly not being considered, then I believe the university is measuring all the wrong things.
Professor Ron Henderson’s record demonstrates why: if the value of a faculty member is reduced to the salary line associated with their position, then the university fails to account for the enormous amount of intellectual, professional, social, and financial capital that faculty generate. This matters because I am paying for and being promised a professional education. As I am sure you are aware, I, along with all other MLA+U students, am making substantial financial and personal investments in the university, as already expensive tuition continues to increase in price.
As you can see from my academic records, I began at Illinois Tech in 2022 studying in the Master of Architecture program. Finding myself a bit dissatisfied, I took a combined Architecture and Landscape program.
Architecture studios in the final year of my degree. After working with the incredible MLA+U faculty and seeing their international impact firsthand, I was pulled into the program after already earning a graduate degree from the school. I can say with full certainty that I joined this program, committing much more time and money to Illinois Tech, because I knew I would have strong leadership and unique studio opportunities from Ron Henderson, Maria Villalobos, and Nilay Mistry. I know a lot of MLA+U students can similarly attest to this opinion on the program leadership.
Additionally, I chose this program because I expect to graduate with an education that prepares me for professional practice, and the faculty teaching me are a large part of the value of that degree. Illinois Tech describes the MLA+U program as an “education centered on equitable landscapes, ecology, history, community involvement, climate change, technological advancement, and ethical practice”. Professor Ron Henderson’s career is an unusually direct embodiment of those goals. He works across ecology, urbanism, technology, history, international collaboration, professional practice, and community engagement. Removing him therefore raises a fundamental question: what exactly are students being asked to pay for if the university is simultaneously eliminating the faculty who embody the expertise and professional connections that make the program valuable?
This truly becomes a question of institutional priorities, which raises more significant concerns in the context of the university’s broader restructuring and international expansion. It is wonderful that the university finds itself able to expand its global presence; however, this expansion should not come at the expense of the educational experience of its current students. Students deserve transparency about how institutional priorities are being balanced. If faculty positions are being eliminated because of financial necessity, then students should be able to understand why those positions were selected, what alternatives were considered, and how the university intends to maintain the quality of its academic programs.
The university has attributed the workforce reductions to an effort to “ensure fiscal stability” and “continue to provide excellent education” for students. The university also stated that it would maintain a 15-to-1 student-faculty ratio after the restructuring. While the university may think they are ensuring fiscal stability by letting Professor Ron Henderson go, they are in fact releasing one of the top grant earners for the college. Additionally, as many of my points have stated above, releasing Ron absolutely contradicts the university’s supposed goal to continue to provide an excellent education for its students.
Losing Ron as a professor would be detrimental to his students but also create a much higher student-to faculty ratio than what the university promised in its restructuring. MLA+U studios and advising will now be seeing closer to a twenty-something to one student-to-faculty ratio, which is absolutely unacceptable. It will be nearly impossible for students to get the proper direction and attention required from professors, as class sizes will be larger than those typically seen in architecture/landscape architecture/urbanism undergraduate class sizes. As a graduate student paying the high tuition I am, this greatly upsets me, as I know my education will take a profound hit, compared to my experience thus far.
With all being said, when the university is deciding which faculty member to retain, it should consider the full value those individuals bring, and by that standard, Professor Ron Henderson deserves serious reconsideration.
Retaining Professor Ron Henderson is an investment, not just an expense, as he represents a rare combination of qualities:
• He is an internationally recognized professional.
• He is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).
• He is an author and scholar.
• He has secured and participated in externally supported research.
• He has established international academic relationships.
• He has worked with institutions including Harvard, Tsinghua, and the University of Tokyo.
• He has created international opportunities for Illinois Tech students.
• His students have received national recognition.
• He has and continues to contribute to Chicago-based community work.
• He has helped shape Illinois Tech’s own unique physical and academic landscape.
And he continues to contribute to the intellectual and professional identity of the MLA+U program. That is not an ordinary faculty resume. It is the resume of someone whose professional reputation has become intertwined with the reputation and opportunities of the institution.
For these reasons, I respectfully ask President Echambadi and Provost Hudson to reconsider Professor Ron Henderson’s dismissal.
Specifically, I am asking the administration to:
• Reconsider the decision to eliminate Professor Ron Henderson’s position.
• Evaluate his position based on his complete institutional contribution, not simply the salary associated with the position.
• Consider his contributions to research funding, professional recognition, student opportunities, international partnerships, community engagement, and campus development.
• Evaluate the effect of his removal on the landscape of the MLA+U program and its ability to maintain the professional and educational quality promised to students.
• Provide students and faculty with greater transparency regarding the criteria used to determine which faculty positions were eliminated.
• Conduct an assessment of the academic and accreditation consequences of the broader faculty reductions.
• Create a meaningful opportunity for impacted faculty and students to participate in discussions about the university’s restructuring and its academic consequences.
I am not asking Illinois Tech to ignore its financial challenges; however, I am asking Illinois Tech to make better decisions about what it considers valuable. A university cannot build its future by eliminating the people who have already built its intellectual community and physical environment.
Professor Ron Henderson has spent countless years building relationships between IIT and the broader world of landscape architecture, academia, research, professional practice, and international education. His students have received incredible opportunities and recognition due to those relationships. His work has contributed to Chicago. His work has contributed to the Illinois Tech campus. His research has contributed to the university’s academic mission.
Professor Ron Henderson’s value is not simply measured by the number of courses he teaches. His value is measured by the opportunities he creates for students to work internationally and collaborate with leading institutions, engage in research, build professional networks, and produce work that receives recognition at the highest levels of the profession.
If Illinois Tech wants to be a technological university with a global reputation, an interdisciplinary research culture, and a meaningful connection to Chicago, then Professor Ron Henderson’s career is not at odds with that vision; it is an example of that vision. The decision to retain him should therefore not be viewed as an act of sentimentality or an exception made for one professor. It should be viewed as an investment in the future of Illinois Tech.
As a student who is currently investing my education, time, money, and future in this institution, I ask the administration to recognize the difference between reducing a budget and reducing the value of an education.
Please reconsider the decision to eliminate Professor Ron Henderson’s position.
Please consider not only what he costs Illinois Tech, but what he has brought to it, and what he can continue to bring to its students, its programs, its campus, its city, and its international reputation.
Most sincerely,
Madison Weick
Viona Chiang
Alexandra Gomez
Tonya Zabawa
Elyse Cooke
Elio Armas-Rojo
Taryn Randle
Ellie Michaels
Yesenia Contreras
Saeed Alhawsah
Brianna Henderson
Aman Shah
Bogdan Brezden
Manal Ayub Shekasan
Matthew Arenas
Yash Nilesh Lokhande
Yenyssel Bernal
Abdulmalik Mohammad Saleh
Ahoud Thabet
Brenda Cardenas
Omar Rodriguez
Juliana Cardozo
Chamorro Jorge
Luis Mayorga
Julian Stanfield
Erik Norwood
Fabian Perez
Anasazi Ramirez-Silva