Lois Brink MLA

Research

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Professor Brink’s knowledge and experience of playground development—coupled with her 30 years as a landscape architect—is critical to other similar initiatives. During her stewardship of Learning Landscapes, a $50 million design and construction initiative that completed 96 redeveloped elementary schoolyards in the fall of 2012, the organization made substantial progress in multiple school districts in Colorado and across the country. Professor Brink spent last year as a national advisor for the Space to Grow schoolyard redevelopment initiative in Chicago. Professor Brink is currently examining the sustainability of schoolyard redevelopment through four other efforts:

• Providing technical assistance to the Philadelphia Water Department’s Office of Watershed’s Green Schools Campaign
• IPLAY, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant studying change in physical activity levels in children
• An evaluation of Chicago Public Schools Learning Garden Pilot program
• Healthy Kids Healthy Scores, a feasibility study that examines site-based farming at Denver Public Schools.