Member News

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This page of the ACSP Web Site now replaces what was Update, the Association's quarterly newsletter about news at member schools. Submit your content for the web site in an MS Word document attachment to ddodd@acsp.org. Content will expire six months from posting unless we are notified otherwise. Available positions at member schools should be sent as a separate file to ddodd@acsp.org. See Job Bank link in the left menu.

Member News Articles

Jackson State University

New York University (top)

  • NYU Wagner is pleased to announce that two incoming graduate students, Daniel Suraci and Ronnie A. Hutchinson, were awarded the AITE (Advanced Institute for Transportation Education) Graduate Scholarship by US DOT University Transportation Research Center (Region 2). The AITE targets master students and young professionals in transportation and related fields. The award includes a scholarship and stipend.
  • NYU Wagner student Shuai Ren was awarded the September 11 Memorial Scholarship by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council and the US DOT University Transportation Research Center. This scholarship program seeks to educate and motivate students interested in transportation technology and planning through innovative research and internship throughout the New York metropolitan region. This scholarship includes a stipend, tuition assistance, and a chance to participate in a transportation conference, as well as an internship in the Planning and Sustainability Division at the New York City Department of Transportation.
  • NYU Wagner Professor Zhan Guo has co-authored a forthcoming Journal of American Planning Association (JAPA) paper, which argues that land-use planning and congestion pricing are mutually supportive in changing household vehicle miles traveled. It is based on a mileage fee program in Portland, OR. The full citation is "Guo, Z., Agrawal, A.W., and Dill, J. (2011) Are Land-use Planning and Congestion Pricing Mutually Supportive? Evidence from a Pilot Mileage Fee Program in Portland, OR."

University of Washington (top)

  • The UW Department of Urban Design and Planning and the UW Institute for Hazards Mitigation and Planning, in coordination with county, and state emergency management officials, and tribal emergency management agencies, is undertaking a study called “Project Safe Haven” for Washington State's Pacific and Grays Harbor Counties. The study, ongoing since January 2010, is described by its team members as “a grassroots, community driven, public process currently taking place on the Washington Coast to identify areas for future [tsunami] vertical evacuation structures.” The Project Safe Haven team, led by UDP faculty member and Director of the UDP Institute of Hazards Mitigation and Planning Research, Bob Freitag, and UDP professor Ron Kasprisin, has the task of working with local citizens to locate, size and conceptually imbed via urban design, safe haven towers, berms and/or buildings that are safe zones within a fifteen minute walk of population clusters. The urban design component of the project consists of determining specific structure locations identifying alternative uses and assuring their availability in the event of a tsunami.
  • UDP professor Branden Born is currently serving on Washington State’s first Regional Food Policy Council (RFPC). The RFPC was formed as a subset of the Puget Sound Regional Council following the efforts of local food activists who had originally formed the Seattle-King County Acting Food Policy Council. As described on the RFPC website, the newly formed food council’s goal is to develop "just and integrated policy and action recommendations that promote health, sustain and strengthen the local and regional food system" and to "engage and partner with agriculture, business, communities and governments in the four-county region.” Professor Born will be representing the higher education/academia sector on the council and will be joined by UDP alum Alon Bassok and UDP PhD candidate Megan Horst, both of whom are members of the Puget Sound Regional Council staff. Other RFPC council members include representatives from the waste/recycling/energy conservation sector, K – 12 education, the restaurant sector, small to mid-size regional grocers, wholesale production and marketing, urban/town community-based agriculture, and hunger and labor organizations. The RFPC will be chaired by Seattle city councilman Richard Conlin, who explains on his website that the creation of RFPC marks a “significant new milestone in our campaign for healthy, local food.”
  • UDP Professor Terry Grissom has recently been appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of Property Investment and Finance. Published out of London, the Journal of Property Investment and Finance is ranked among the top three real estate economic journals in Europe along with the Journal of Property Research and the European Journal of Real Estate Research. Stated amongst its goals listed on the Emerald Group Publishing Ltd website, the Journal of Property Investment and Finance seeks to "publish well-written, readable articles of intellectual rigour with a theoretical and practical relevance to the real estate profession" and "Address subjects of major interest and practical importance to the real estate professions."
  • The University of Groningen and University of Washington Student Exchange Program began in 1989, and has become the largest student exchange program opportunity available to students within the College of Built Environments. Since the program's inception, nearly eighty students from the University of Washington have taken part in the program, spending a quarter in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands, primarily during the autumn term. Last April, Paul van Steen, Director of the International Urban Planning program of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, visited the UW Department of Urban Design and Planning to speak with seven of the department's graduate students and seven of the department's undergraduate students about the details of their studying at the University of Groningen this coming autumn. In addition, the visit served to renew the agreement to extend the University of Groningen and University of Washington Student Exchange Program. Paul van Steen was accompanied by four of his Dutch faculty colleagues from the University of Groningen: planning professors Terry van Dijk and Justin Beaumont and real estate professors Arno van der Vlist and Ed Nozeman. As part of the exchange, next autumn and winter terms, four Dutch students from the University of Groningen will be coming to Seattle to study real estate and urban planning at the UW College of Built Environments.