Association of Pacific Coast Geographers honors Ph.D. student’s urban forestry paper
Andrés Peñalosa Reyna, who dropped out of college three times, received the President’s Award for an Outstanding Paper by a Ph.D. Student at the recent Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Conference in Santa Clarita.
Reyna, who is seeking a doctorate in urban planning and public policy and is a member of the Ulibarrí Research Group led by Associate Professor Nícola Ulibarrí, presented his master’s thesis “Strategies, Differences, and Placemaking Among Forestry Experts in the Tijuana-San Diego Border Region” at the conference on Oct. 10.
While the benefits of increasing urban tree density are well known, implementing policy to produce urban forests is lacking. Reyna’s study offers recommendations based on understanding the process of environmental placemaking through an analysis of stakeholder perspectives.
The President’s Award was announced during the conference’s Oct. 11 banquet.
“This award was for me, my grandpa, my brother, and all my family,” Reyna says. “I would not be the person I am if I did not have their love, support, and examples of working hard to move up in the world.”
After his younger brother, Christopher Macias, graduated in 2017 from College of the Desert in Palm Desert, he encouraged Reyna to give higher education a fourth try. That led to Reyna earning five associate degrees – in environmental science, geography, anthropology, interdisciplinary studies in science/math and interdisciplinary studies in social sciences – from Fullerton College, which named him a Student of Distinction-Academic in 2021.
Reyna transferred to San Diego State University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geography in 2023 and this past May, respectively. He earned a College of Letters President's Award for his oral presentation, “Bosque Urbano De Las Californias: A Transnational Urban Forest In Urban Mediterranean North America.”
During his master’s studies, he co-authored a paper with researchers from Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. “Community engagement in groundwater management to enhance climate resilience: A comparative study of California and Baja California" was just published in the December issue of Agricultural Water Management. The study proposes recommendations to strengthen water management policies in both regions.
“I am the first person in my family to enter graduate school and the first to be published in a peer-reviewed journal,” Reyna says proudly.
Meanwhile, he may soon have another study published as a “top urban forestry journal” has one third of his master’s thesis under review, according to Reyna, whose strategy is to have the three parts published one at a time.
“I dedicated my thesis to my grandpa, Miguel Reyna Salazar, who died during my master’s program,” Reyna says. “He dropped out of school when he was in second grade to go work in a bakery because his family did not have enough to eat.”
Reyna included in his thesis his personal philosophy:
“People cannot be contained by the lines we draw on maps, humanity transcends those lines.”
— Matt Coker
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