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For Chris Kochtitzky, MSP, 1992, being a DURP graduate means working as a policy analyst with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta with a mission of applying urban planning to the creation of healthy cities.

What do all these people have in common besides their graduate degrees in urban and regional planning at Florida State University? All of them have a commitment to use their professional and scholarly educations in urban and regional planning to make our world a better place to live.

These eleven individuals are not alone. Since 1965, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning has graduated over 900 MSP's and Ph.D.'s in urban and regional planning who have gone on to shape the built environment, the natural environment, and the social environment so that human beings can live in greater harmony with their environment and with each other. As the oldest school of planning in the state of Florida, Florida State not only leads the state in producing planners but is also among the top ten universities in the nation in graduating students with degrees in planning. Although two-thirds of our graduates have stayed to face the many planning challenges in Florida, our graduates are now also employed in 40 states and 23 foreign nations as professional staff in private consulting firms, in law firms, universities, research organizations, and in local, state, regional, and national offices.

The Department is proud of all its degree programs. The Department's Masters of Science in Planning program has produced most of the Department's 900+ graduates. The Department also offers a joint master's degree program with the Askew School of Public Administration and with the Florida State College of Law. In addition, it maintains a fine Ph.D. program in urban and regional planning. About 50 percent of the graduates of the Ph.D. program have gone on to college teaching including, most recently, the University of Iowa and California State University at San Luis Obispo.

Staffing the Department are 11 full time faculty whose teaching and research focus on six areas that the Department feels are important to the future of our cities and regions: environmental planning and natural resource management, growth management and comprehensive planning, healthy systems planning, housing and community development, planning for developing areas, and transportation planning.

Among the 11 faculty in the Department is the planner in residence, a practicing planner with substantial experience and responsibility. Since 1987, when the planner in residence program began, the Department has brought in practicing planners on a rotating basis to teach planning practice courses and complement the teaching and research performed by the Department's regular faculty. Through the planner in residence program, the Department has been able to develop a community outreach capacity that enables it to provide planning assistance to various community agencies and groups.

In addition, the Department offers a Master's International Program in conjunction with the US Peace Corps. As the first planning program in the nation to do so, Florida State is now able to attract many talented students from throughout the nation to study planning for two years prior to being sent to a two year Peace Corps assignment where they can apply their planning skills to the problems of developing nations and regions.

Overall, therefore, as indicated by the brief profiles of the eleven DURP alumni, the Department plays an important role in graduating practitioners and scholars who are succeeding in making this a better world to live. If you know someone who wants to make a difference in the world, tell that person to consider the Department of Urban and Regional Planning as a place where students learn how to make a difference.

Source: College of Social Sciences newsletter Spring 2001