Grant Fahlgren, MLA student at the University of British Columbia, and Maria Munoz, an undergraduate at Louisiana State University, won the top prizes in the Landscape Architecture Foundation's 2015 Olmsted Scholars program.

The Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) has announced the two winners and six finalists for the 2015 Olmsted Scholars program, the premier national award and recognition program for landscape architecture students.

The graduate school recipient is Grant Fahlgren, who is in the landscape architecture master's program at the University of British Columbia. Grant expects to graduate in November 2015. The graduate prize is $25,000.

The 2015 National Olmsted Scholar at the undergraduate level is Maria Munoz of Louisiana State University. Maria will graduate with a BLA in May 2015. She is the recipient of a $15,000 prize.

Grant Fahlgren intends to use the award to research the collaborative partnerships between indigenous communities and designers in the Cascadia bioregion. He's looking to better understand the common ground between the fields of ecology and landscape architecture, and how those professions will collaborate in the future.

Building on her heritage and experiences in Puerto Rico, Maria Munoz plans to use the award to research the island's network of homegrown agriculture products. Through interviews and mapping, she intends to document the social networks and marketing strategies of the growers to help increase homegrown food to local markets.