BY ZACH MORTICE
Image courtesy of Colorado State University.
Twelve Colorado State University Master of Landscape Architecture graduates are suing the school for promising to become an accredited degree program and failing to follow through, even seven years after the program began.
The lawsuit alleges that the school promised to pursue accreditation after an initial class had graduated, as Landscape Architectural Accreditation Board (LAAB) regulations require. Shelley Don, of Don, Galleher & Associates in Denver, is the attorney for all 12 plaintiffs. ?The students understood that they were not getting into an accredited program,? Don said, ?but were made to understand that the school was applying for accreditation, and that their role was going to be a necessary component of the accreditation process.? E-mails transcribed in the formal complaint, and first reported by the Coloradoan, show that Brad Goetz, a Colorado State landscape architecture professor and the director of the MLA program, repeatedly assured the plaintiffs that the school was indeed seeking MLA accreditation.
After Goetz told one plaintiff, Scott Preston, via e-mail that the university was working toward accreditation in October 2014, Preston replied that the only reason he had chosen to attend CSU was because the school had promised to become accredited. ?I?m staring at a mountain of debt from attending the program, and really just want to know if there is a commitment to this goal,? Preston wrot...