Anne Spafford, the department head and landscape architecture and environmental design professor told the university that the name change aligns more succinctly with the department's mission.
The department is a unit of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and also includes the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station and the MSU Extension Service.
According to the school, in 2023 there were 105 undergraduate students enrolled and 16 graduate students. The university is known for their strength in engineering and scientific agriculture and has the only accredited bachelor of landscape architecture degree program in the three state region of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee.