Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The Urban Studies program is kind of a general liberal arts/social science education.
We look at... It's inherently interdisciplinary and
we look at
lots of different subjects and how they intersect to make cities the way that
they are.
My own work focuses more specifically on urban political
economy
so I look at questions of urban politics, on alternative local economic
development so kind of looking at
innovative ways of
developing the economies of cities.
And then i also teach what i consider to be my
academic hobby which is an urban environmental history and theory course
and that one does exactly that. Kind of tries to understand
the relationship between cities
and nature
in the United States through time and up through the present.
I've tried to reach out and get students out of the classroom through
service-learning projects
in my classes.
We offer a number of different internships and
these kinds of things that
really try to get students familiar with the local
community. I also teach an international course
where I bring a group of students
somewhere between 12 and 15 students to the country of
the Netherlands. We'll visit a number of different cities. We'll have a one-week
excursion
to the city of Hamburg in Germany and
get a chance to
explore some of the urban studies and sustainable urban development topics
often in another national context.
Other members of the Urban Studies faculty
that might also be of interest: Dr. Matt Kelley.
He runs the Geographic Information Systems
certificate program
and does a lot of really interesting work around mapping
and gathering data. Data that can be
put into
mapping software and produce really interesting maps. Anne Wessels
also is a faculty member. She teaches more specifically
in the sustainable urban development
degree program.
She's doing really interesting things with
urban waterfronts in understanding
local citizen input
in relation to what
we do with our urban waterfronts, how we develop them sustainably.
Again, I think that
the Urban Studies faculty members all have something different to offer.
And I would encourage you to take a look at them.