Scholarship Winner
Melissa Mae Larot
2024 FASAE SoCal Education Foundation Alimento-Niere Scholarship recipient.
Melissa Mae Larot is a fifth-year architecture student at the University of Southern California, minoring in Nonprofits, Philanthropy, and Volunteerism. Because she grew up in a U.S. Navy family, she moved eleven times by the time she was eleven years old, experiencing the direct impact of rising rental costs in San Diego. This early familiarity with housing instability taught her resilience and gave her a strong desire to protect other families from facing similar hardships. Her academic and artistic achievements earned her both the Victor S. Sauer Scholarship and the USC Architectural Guild Scholarship.
Melissa has developed a strong technical foundation in design platforms including Revit, Rhino3D, AutoCAD, and the Adobe Creative Suite. She recently worked as an architectural intern at LPA Design Studios, where she contributed to sustainable healthcare and education projects while supporting the firm's AIA 2030 commitment. On campus, she served as a graphics assistant for USC's undergraduate architecture programs, managing visual announcements and helping review documentation for the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB).
Outside the studio, Melissa focuses heavily on community service and representation. As the student volunteer coordinator for Casa Milagrosa under the USC Caruso Catholic Center, she manages volunteer shifts, distributes meals, and runs art classes for unhoused guests. She is also dedicated to connecting her architectural studies with her heritage. By planning design workshops for local youth and mentoring younger Filipino American students, she hopes to support underrepresented young women who are pursuing careers in design.
For her upcoming thesis, Melissa plans to research permanent supportive housing models in Los Angeles' Historic Filipinotown. Her long-term goal is to establish her own 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that blends compassionate architectural design with affordable housing initiatives, eventually expanding her efforts to the Philippines. Her work is guided by the cultural values of bayanihan, meaning communal unity, and utang na loob, or gratitude, as she strives to help vulnerable populations find stability and a true sense of home.