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Alumni Awards List

STEPHEN RHOADES developed an interest in drafting and architectural drawing while attending Liberty Senior High School in Liberty, Missouri. He is a 1988 graduate of the K-State Design Discovery Program, which he credits with inspiring his passion for landscape architecture. While pursuing the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture at K-State, Steve was a member of Sigma Lambda Alpha Honor Society. He spent the summer months as a park-planning intern with the Kansas City, Missouri, Parks and Recreation Department

After graduation, Steve went to work for DHM Design in Denver, Colorado. Some of the projects he worked on included Yosemite National Park Employee Housing, Sequoia-King Canyon National Park--Wuksachi Village Center, Denver International Airport and Stonegate Residential Community

In 1995, he joined Colorado Land Consultants where he was involved in land planning for several large-scale commercial and retail development projects in the Western United States. Later in 1995, Steve returned to the Kansas City, Missouri, Parks and Recreation Department where he worked in the Planning Services Division. While there, his projects included design of park master plans, play areas, trails and Kansas City's first skateboard park. He also developed an integrated computer network for the Planning Division and assisted in development of the Department's first web page.

Since 1999, Steve has been employed by Patti Banks Associates, a small landscape architecture and community planning firm in Kansas City, Missouri. As part of the Patti Banks Associates team, he has been involved in a variety of projects that include community planning and design; transit-supportive development planning; greenway, park and trail planning; environmental design; natural resource planning and urban design.

Steve was part of the consultant team for the Mid-America Regional Council's "Creating Quality Places" series, generating transit-supportive development prototypes around the Kansas City area. He was a participant in the initial design charette team and is serving as the project landscape architect for New Longview, a traditional neighborhood development in Lee's Summit, Missouri. He is currently on loan to the Mid-America Regional Council to assist in the implementation of MetroGreen, a seven-county metropolitan trail and greenway system of over 1,100 miles in the Kansas City area.

His contributions to MetroGreen have been honored with a 2003 Award of Excellence from the Prairie Gateway Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, an Award of Merit from the North Carolina Chapter of the ASLA, and an American Planning Association Planning Award.

Steve is the President of the Prairie Gateway Chapter of the ASLA and is a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and CLARB. He is a Registered Landscape Architect in the states of Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.