Andrea Kline is HRWC’s most recent Hall of Fame inductee. Please join us in remembering and appreciating Andrea for her work to improve the Huron River.
Andrea will be remembered as a person that led a very active personal and professional life. She was very engaging with friends and colleagues and developed a reputation for finishing what she started regardless of how mundane the task was. Her penchant for traveling combined with her love of nature and the outdoors, carried forward as major influences in how she lived her life and pursued career ambitions. She was outgoing and personable, had many friends and was well respected by her colleagues in the profession of Landscape Architecture.
When not at work, Andrea enjoyed several forms of outdoor recreation including; kayaking, hiking, x-country skiing, camping and gardening. These activities combined with traveling enhanced her experiences and invigorated her as a professional.
Traveling fulfilled her desire for adventure while her love for nature and the outdoors were the drivers that guided her education and professional career. Environmental education, resource preservation and conservation, restoration design, and recreation planning in urban environments served as her subject matter in school and in private practice.
Her environmental roots extend back to high school growing up in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. At that time, she became interested in the relationship between people and the landscape after observing urban development consuming the fields, woodlands, wetlands and streams where she spent much of her leisure time. During this period in her life, the concept of integrating environmental and aesthetic concerns with the built environment was in its infancy. The New Town Movement was just taking hold in the eastern United States and Andrea experienced this movement first hand in nearby Columbia, Maryland.
After studying ecology and biology at Western Maryland College for two years, Andrea enrolled in the Landscape Architecture Department at West Virginia University in 1977 where she focused on resource conservation, regional planning and design and economics. As an undergraduate, she gained a greater appreciation for resource planning and design and was heavily influenced by land planning principles described in Ian McHarg’s “Design With Nature.” While a student, she became active in the community, promoting watershed planning and conservation through public awareness and education. She stood out in her class for her uniqueness and upon graduation in 1981, was awarded the ASLA Certificate of Honor for Excellence in the Study of Landscape Architecture for her community activism and innovation in local creekshed planning for recreation, conservation and education.
In 1983, Andrea enrolled at the University of Michigan’s Department of Landscape Architecture in the Master’s program at the School of Natural Resources (SNR) now School of Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). With aspirations of a future career as an educator, she focused her education toward research, teaching and recreation planning. At SEAS, she fit in well with the faculty and staff, supplementing her income as a teaching assistant. For three years she shared her knowledge in site engineering and integrated problem solving with fellow students. During her summers, Andrea worked as a research assistant at the University, evaluating visual preferences in the landscape. She also worked in private practice for the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority and Pollack Design Associates assisting in recreation planning and design projects. She graduated in 1985 receiving a Masters in Landscape Architect. After graduation, Andrea was invited back to the University to continue teaching the site engineering class that she helped develop as a student.
Andrea never lost interest in environmental education, and resource conservation and preservation. Serving as the East Michigan Conservation Director with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), she managed a multi-disciplinary team of biologists, conservation planners, land stewards and real estate specialists and empowered them in developing and implementing strategies to conserve ecologically important landscapes in the Eastern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. During this time, she collaborated with government agencies, nonprofit and academic partners to accomplish mutual conservation goals, securing public and private funds for project implementation and conducting real estate negotiations. Andrea loved spreading the story about TNC’s accomplishments and made numerous public presentations to conservation organizations. Because of her outreach efforts she became very active in The Stewardship Network and the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge Alliance where she served as a board member.
In Private practice, Andrea achieved a number of noteworthy accomplishments and awards. In the early 1990’s, she elevated her professional stature and earned the titles of Senior Landscape Architect and Senior Designer among others and worked collaboratively with many organizations creating habitat designs, recreation plans and construction documents for a number of award-winning projects. She also managed complex projects requiring multi-disciplinary expertise and co-authored many environmental (NEPA) documents for significant utility, energy and transportation projects. Traveling was also an important aspect of her career and she spent considerable time in the field performing inspections, conducting resource inventories and overviewing construction activities. She rounded out her professional skills in business development by marketing and maintaining a long list of clients, providing environmental services for major utility transmission lines, energy projects, airports and highways. A majority of these accomplishments were achieved during her 14-year employment at Johnson, Johnson and Roy (JJR, now SmithGroup), a multi-disciplinary consulting firm in Ann Arbor.
For the last 10 years of her career, Andrea worked as an independent consultant practicing her profession of Landscape Architecture in these same capacities. She spent several years working with Merit Network as their Environmental Compliance Manager responsible for over 2,300 miles of new fiber optics network in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 2014 she joined HRWC as a construction manager for the RiverUp! initiative and was responsible for the development, design and implementation of projects that support the Huron River Water Trail.
At the time of her passing, Andrea was serving as project manager for the Friends of the Detroit River overseeing a number of pedestrian and bicycle pathway studies in Downriver Michigan that are part of the Iron Bell Trail and the Downriver Linked Greenways trails.
Thank you to Paul Evanoff for his help in producing this tribute to Andrea.