Rob Kuper teaches undergraduate and graduate landscape architecture design studio and engineering courses.

Between 2012 and 2020, he co-directed design-build studio course projects that received almost 40 awards. Recently, Rob has taught the sophomore design and 3rd-year graduate capstone restoration design project studios. In landscape engineering, Rob teaches grading, stormwater calculations, layout methods, construction detailing, and building materials and methods. 

Rob’s current research focuses on the climate crisis. In particular, he has studied travel-related carbon emissions and intends to broaden his investigations to include embodied emissions in landscape architectural materials and methods (e.g., diesel-powered construction machinery). In the past, Rob focused on how time affects the human perception of landscapes. He has proposed moving the Mountain-Central Standard Time Zone Boundary to coincide with the climatic boundary that defines the Great Plains; examined whether seasonally-induced visual changes to plants such as flowering, foliation and senescence affect how much people like a landscape, for whatever reason, and investigated whether the size of trees in a scene affects a landscape’s potential to restore one’s ability to pay attention or focus.

Rob has served on many departmental, school, university and organizational committees, anonymously reviewed manuscripts for numerous publications and conferences and participated in several design review juries. 

When not on campus or at his desk, Rob uses hand tools to manage invasive plants, and install or steward natives, in a reserve and a park near his home.