Chapter awards annual student scholarships

Every year APA-WA awards two academic scholarships to students from the accredited programs at the University of Washington and Eastern Washington University. The competitive scholarships are awarded based on the students’ outstanding academic performance, their contributions to the planning profession as students, and for their future potential contributions to the planning profession.

Meet the winners

Andrew Kienast is a first-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning student at Eastern Washington University, where he is specializing in environmental planning. He spent the past academic year researching the topic of sustainable practices in small businesses. This summer Andrew began working with the Community Indicators Initiative, part of EWU’s Institute for Public Policy and Economic Analysis. The purpose of the Community Indicators Initiative is to make local data available in key areas such as demographics, economic vitality, education, and the environment.

Andrew graduated from Central Washington University with a Bachelor of Arts in English language and literature. Andrew is actively involved in the community. He volunteers his time by serving on Spokane’s Bicycle Advisory Board and by interning at Futurewise. Although a native and longtime resident of Western Washington, Andrew is enjoying the unique beauty of the Inland Northwest.

Matthew Mateo is a first-year Master of Urban Planning student at the University of Washington. Originally from the U.S. Territory of Guam, Mateo (as he is most commonly known) graduated from Virginia Tech in 2008 with a degree in economics. He then served as a legislative assistant and press secretary for U.S. Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo in Washington, D.C. Mateo has broadened his professional career with forays in artisan cheese making in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, volunteer farming in the Philippines and South Korea, and the completion of a 580-mile walking pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Mateo was most recently a hard apple cider maker in Virginia before enrolling at the University of Washington. 

At the University of Washington, Mateo is specializing in land use, infrastructure, and transportation planning. He spent the past academic year working with the Washington Sea Grant and the Puget Sound Partnership on leveraging tax incentives in Washington state for residential shoreline conservation. Mateo attended both the APA Washington conference in Bellevue in 2013 and the national APA conference in Atlanta in 2014, where he won first place in the Student Case Competition.