N E W S L E T T E RFall 2015

URSP ALUMNI

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MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTORJim Cohen

As you will see from the articles and updates herein, the 2014-15 academic year was a fulfilling one for URSP students, faculty members and alumni. It was the inaugural year for the Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS), created and administered by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education. As described by Maggie Haslem, herein, PALS provides assistance to one or two Maryland cities or counties each year on sustainability-related issues identified by those jurisdictions. The assistance is provided through undergraduate and graduate courses that focus some or all of their class activities on analysis and strategy development related to those issues.

A talented team of the School‘s students, including URSP’s Patrick Reed, won the top prize in this year’s Urban Land Institute / Gerald D. Hines Student Design Competition. This marked the second year in a row in which the School has won the competition, which has a field of over 150 teams. Not only is it remarkable that the School repeated as champions, but that we did so with an entirely different team of students from the one in 2014.

Included in the issue is an update from the Economic Development Center directed by Marie Howland and Scott Dempwolf. You also will read about the activities and accomplishments of several of our current students, such as Tanya Sayyed who spent this past summer doing action learning in Ethiopia; about Maha Tariq who has worked on historic preservation with the National Park Service; about Amina Mohamed who is currently interning with Mahan Rykiel Associates, a landscape architecture, urban design, and planning firm; about Max Pastore who has been working with the Prince George’s County Community Planning Department; and about Brian Goodson, who presented his research project at APA’s Annual Conference this year in Seattle, Washington. You will also find an interview with Charles Noble (09) who describes and reflects upon his experience as Program Manager for the Boys and Men of Color Initiative at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

And of course, you will find short updates of dozens of our alumni, all of whom make us proud.

Right: UMD graduate students on a tour of Frederick, MD - the first city participating in the new PALS Program

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IN THIS ISSUE

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR………………………………………………………………... 2NCSG UPDATE……………………………………………………………………………………... 4-5SCHOOL WINS ULI HINES COMPETITION………………….………………………………... 6-7 2015 LEFRAK LECTURE: INGRID GOULD ELLEN…………………………………………….... 8UMD-MORGAN STATE ECONOMIC CENTER UPDATE……………………………………..... 9CONGRATULATIONS 2015 GRADUATES………………………………………………………. 102014-2015 URSP AWARDS………………………………………………………………………… 11STUDENT PLANNING ASSOCIATION (SPA) UPDATE………………………………………... 12-14REFLECTIONS FROM DESIGN COMPETITION WINNER……………………………………. 15CLASS OF 2016 STUDENT PROFILES……………………………………………………………. 16STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: TANYA SAYYED………………………………………………………. 172014- 2015 STUDIO PROJECTS………………………………………………………………….... 18-19ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: CHARLES NOBLE……………………………………………………...... 20-21 FACULTY UPDATES…………………………………………………………………………….... 22- 25ALUMNI UPDATES………………………………………………………………………………...26- 37

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NATIONAL CENTER FOR SMART GROWTH UPDATENATIONAL CENTER FOR SMART GROWTH LEADS NEW CAMPUS-WIDE ACTION LEARNING PROGRAM; SPEARHEADS OPPORTUNITY MAPPING FOR BALTIMORE REGION

by Maggie Haslem

“PALS” PROGRAM DELIVERS $1MILLION INPROJECT VALUE TO MARYLAND COMMUNITIES

This year, a new campus-wide program proved itsstrength in numbers, delivering sustainable solutions toenvironmental, social and economic challenges to twoMaryland cities. Twenty-nine projects—which rangedfrom calculating greenhouse gas emissions to re-envisioning a downtown block—were the culmination ofcoursework during the inaugural year of the Universityof Maryland’s Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainabil-ity, or PALS.

Developed by the University’s National Center forSmart Growth, PALS pairs faculty expertise and studentingenuity with sustainability challenges facing Marylandcommunities. The PALS mission is to provide highquality, low-cost assistance to local governments whilecreating an active and valuable real-world learningexperience for UMD students. Working with one designated community each academic year, PALS pairs customcoursework with specific challenges designated bythe partner community. PALS initiated its first partnership with The City of Frederick, Maryland in Septemberof 2014, adding a second, smaller collaboration withCollege Park in January.

URSP played a significant role in the first year success,dominating the course roster with six of the twenty-fourprojects in Frederick and one of the five courses inCollege Park. Assistant Professor Willow Lung-Amam’splanning course had students engaging minority-ownedbusinesses in the city’s “Golden Mile” business districtto empower them in the area’s revitalization process.An industrial land use analysis, overseen by Dr. ScottDempwolf, assessed East Frederick’s industrial inventory,use and adaptability to mixed-use, as the city considersnew opportunities for growth and development.Another URSP class did a greenhouse gas analysis of theCity’s municipal buildings provided a clear picture ofenergy use and ways to be more efficient. Chao Liu leda course that mapped the social and cultural identitiesand assets of Frederick neighborhoods.“This has truly been a win-win situation for us,” says Uri Avin, Director of the PALS program. “Frederick sees the value in what we can offer and has dedicated the time and effort to help our students as they develop their projects. That kind of

collaboration is what makes this program both effective and meaningful for all involved.”

“We are incredibly pleased with the results of the first semester,” said Gerrit Knaap, the Smart Growth Center’s Director. “This program has incredible potential, not just for the jurisdictions we serve, but for the way it can shape the future of education.”While the majority of project re-ports were delivered to Frederick by year’s end, one final course the summer course, led by Jim Cohen, is offering recommendations for enhancing Frederick’s existing sustainability plan.

PALS begins a new partnership with Howard County this fall, where URSP will spearhead three projects for the county.

“PALS has been a great partnership and has provided invaluable information for our City; we’ll be able to use it for a long time coming,” said Frederick Mayor Randy McClement. “I think it shows what a true partnership in education can do.”

To learn more about PALS, visit the program websiteat http://smartgrowth.umd.edu/PALS

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NATIONAL CENTER FOR SMART GROWTH UPDAT Continued from previous page

NCSG Leads Opportunity Mapping of the BaltimoreRegion

In June of this year a series of maps that illustrategaps in opportunity, developed by the National Centerfor Smart Growth, was the basis for Baltimore’sfirst-ever comprehensive regional plan to createstrong, sustainable communities and break the continu-ous cycle of poverty for many inner-city families.Presented on Monday to city and state policymakersby The Opportunity Collaborative (The Collaborative),The Baltimore Regional Plan for SustainableDevelopment (RPSD) is a comprehensive roadmapto help the region coordinate investments in housing,transportation and workforce development, reducedisparities and increase quality of life for the entireBaltimore metropolitan area.

The NCSG developed the maps, known as “opportunitymaps”, through an extensive, coordinated effortwith The Collaborative and an Opportunity MappingAdvisory Panel (OMAP), consisting of regional expertsand community stakeholders. Over a three-yearperiod, NCSG researchers analyzed a vast and variedcollection of data from public and private sources,resulting in maps that illustrate where economic,social and environmental strengths and weaknesseslie in the Baltimore metropolitan region, which includes Baltimore City, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll,Harford and Howard Counties.

The maps examine regional opportunity in six categories: education; training and workforce development;housing and neighborhood quality; crime and socialcapital; public health and environment; employment;and transportation and mobility. To produce thesemaps, the NCSG and OMAP reviewed over 100 keyindicators—including high school dropout rates andinfant mortality, median income, poverty rates, accessto transit, civic institutions and social capital. Theproject is the largest and most comprehensive snapshotof equity and opportunity in Baltimore’s history.The project shows that while Baltimore City has ahigher level of mobility and job accessibility compared to other parts of the state, its workers have longer commute

times and inadequate public transit to the state’s prospering job centers, many of which lie in the suburban areas. A single composite map, in which all of the six categories are combined and weighed equally, shows Howard County receiving the highest average opportunity score (83rd percentile), followed by Anne Arundel (67th), Baltimore (58th), Harford (41st) and Carroll (34th) Counties. Baltimore City has the lowest average opportunity score (24th per-centile).

Center director Gerrit Knaap described the Balti-more Regional Plan for Sustainable Development as “the region’s first comprehensive effort to develop and implement a regional strategy for economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and social equity.”

The Collaborative hopes outcomes of the RPSD will help direct policy decisions as the region moves for-ward to create more equity and opportunity for the region’s poorest citizens. equity and opportunity for the region’s poorest citizens.

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DESIGN COMPETITIONTERPS WIN ULI HINES COMPETITION FOR SECOND YEAR IN A ROWStory quoted from School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation’s website

An interdisciplinary team from the University ofMaryland’s (UMD) School of Architecture, Planningand Preservation has won the 2015 ULI / Gerald D. Hines Stu-dent Urban Design Competition (ULI Hines). The team of five graduate students—representing architecture, urban planning and real estate development—won over an international jury of experts with their development plan for the Tulane/Gavier and Iberville neighborhoods of New Orleans, beating out two finalist teams from Harvard University and a combined team from the University of Wisconsin Madison and Milwaukee. “It is an honor to win this competition,” said Sofia Weller, who is pursuing her graduate degree in architecture. “It feels like we are part of something much bigger. ULI Hines is considered the Super Bowl of interdisciplinary design competitions. I think we all feel truly humbled by the experience.”

This is the second straight year that a team fromUMD has clinched the ULI/Hines Competition,considered the most prominent student developmentand design competition in the world. UMD’steam initially beat out 120 other entries from someof the most prestigious universities in the U.S. toland in the final four. ULI announced Maryland’swin yesterday in New Orleans at the competitionconclusion. The UMD team will go home with a $50,000prize.

“Our team rose to the challenge in a most impressivemanner, says Professor Matthew Bell, FAIA, who wasone of the team’s advisors. “Their level of talent, passionand dedication to the design is rare and the New Orleanscontext provided for them a terrific vehicle for inter-disci-plinary work. We are most proud to win for a secondstraight year!”

Now in its 13th year, the ULI/Hines competition chal-lenges interdisciplinary teams of graduate students to create a dynamic design and development solution for a real large-scale site in just two weeks. While this is an ideas competition, it is part of the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) continued mission to engage young professionals in collaborative solutions, responsible land use and cre-ation of better communities. The competition demands a variety of expertise to navigate complex zoning codes, understand investment opportunities, examine communi-ty, site challenges and develop exciting yet realistic urban design solutions. This year’s competition revolved around the urban site of the Tulane/Gavier and Iberville neigh-borhoods of New Orleans. ULI challenged teams to create a proposal that furthers the city’s goals of creating vibrant, “sustaiable” neighborhoods by capitalizing on the culture and location of the Tulane/Gravier neighborhood, while fostering economic growth, tourism and place through thoughtful design.

Maryland’s winning team is: Sebastian Dern (MRED), Ashley Grzywa (MARCH), Patrick Reed (MCP), Sofia Weller (MARCH) and Daniel Moreno-Holt (MARCH/MRED).

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DESIGN COMPETITIONTERPS WIN ULI HINES COMPETITION FOR SECOND YEAR IN A ROW

Maryland’s entry, entitled “The Crossing,” took anunconventional approach to the site that set itself apartfrom the competition. The site offers several challeng-es,including the elevated I-10 highway that runs parallel to a potential retail street and an eight-lane off-ramp that separates an existing park from the city’s proposed greenway. To offer greater visibility for retail, the team located the main retail street one block over from the highway, a bold but important move that offers two-sided frontage and pulls the site out of the shadow of the I-10. Re-locating the monstrous off-ramp—re-ferred to by team members as a “scar” across the site—and replacing the linear space under the highway with a green, recreational space connects Louis Armstrong Park with the city’s future greenway and beyond. The new configuration connects neighborhood retail/resi-dential with the park and offers seamless access to the French Quarter and the neighboring medical sector.

“There have been a lot of studies conducted on this area of New Orleans,” said Patrick Reed, a graduate student with the Urban Studies and Planning Pro-gram. “The majority of the scenarios we studied had retail fronts facing C layborne Avenue, which is the street under the highway. In a lot of ways, the other teams took some safe moves by saying ‘they’ve stud-ied this, they want to put it there, we’ll do what they think is best,’ where we didn’t really necessarily feel

constrained by what was already done.”“Our approach was, if this is really an ideas competition,what is the best strategy and the best solution moving for-ward? What would make this space the best that it can be?”added architecture graduate student Ashley Grzywa. “Thatthinking helped us stretch the design boundaries while stillremaining realistic.”

The greenspace also hosts programmed recreational spaceand a “resilience center,” to celebrate the spirit and forti-tude of New Orleans. Architectural accents throughout theneighborhood, including retail typographies that marry with the existing historic shotgun houses, capture the city’s vibe and culture. While the design makes up an important part of the competition, the financials are what drive the victory.

The team’s two real estate graduate students—Daniel Moreno-Holt and Sebastian Dern—offered creative yet realistic financial feasibility that were key to the team’s success.“Sebastian and Dan were extremely creative in finding ways tofund our crazy ideas,” adds Weller.

“This is a great day for us,” said David Cronrath, Dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. “Continuing our success at ULI is no easy feat. This is an outstanding group of students and I couldn’t be prouder of their achievement.

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LEFRAK LECTUREURSP hosts Dr.Ingrid Gould Ellen for the 2015 Annual Samuel J. Lefrak Lecture and Seminar

The Lefrak Lecture is made possible by a generous donation by the Samual J. Ethel Lefrak Foundation

The event is open to all students, alumni, faculty, staff and the general public.

By Dr. Casey Dawkins

On April 27, The Urban Studies and Planning Program welcomed Ingrid Gould Ellen, Professor and Faculty Director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University, to deliver the annual Samuel J. Lefrak Lecture. The lecture series was established in 1983 to honor Samuel J. LeFrak, an accomplished developer and planner and 1940 graduate of the University of Maryland who helped shaped New York City’s middle class housing. Lefrak had a passion for making cities work dynamically, a legacy that continues today with the lecture series established in his honor.

This year’s lecture entitled “The Future of U.S. Housing Policy” explored the effects and effectiveness of federal, state, and local affordable housing programs in the U.S. Dr. Ellen began with a discussion of recent trends in housing cost burdens facing U.S. renters. Over the last several decades, household incomes have stagnated while rents have risen. As a result, nearly a third of U.S. renters now spend more than half of their incomes on housing. Based on a recent review of research on this topic and her own research, Dr. Ellen concluded that while rental housing assistance programs have been successful in reducing rent burdens and improving housing conditions for many low-income families, only one in four eligible families receives assistance,

and housing subsidies generally do not help families secure housing in lower-poverty neighborhoods or higher-performing school districts. She addressed several important tradeoffs currently facing housing policymakers, including concentrating versus dispersing housing subsidies, emphasizing long-term versus short-term subsidies, investing in high-poverty areas versus facilitating access to low-poverty neighborhoods, serving the lowest-income households versus those earning moderate incomes, and the benefits and costs of income-based versus flat rent policies. Dr. Ellen concluded by pointing to several promising directions for future housing policy efforts, including policies to enhance housing choice, encourage work through housing, stretch subsidy dollars, and reform local government land use and fiscal policies.

The morning after the lecture, Dr. Ellen met with members of the Urban Studies and Planning Program and the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education to discuss her research and its relationship with other work that is currently underway at the University of Maryland.

Right: UMD graduate students on a tour of Frederick, MD - the first city participat-ing in the new PALS Program

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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CENTER UPDATESBy Marie Howland

In the 2014-2015 academic year, the University of Maryland assited Morgan State Economic Development Administra-tion Center, led by URSP’s Scott Dempwolf and Marie Howland and assited by URSP students, have contributed to eco-nomic development efforts for the State of Illinois, Montgomery County, St. Mary’s County, the City of Baltimore, Prince George’s County, the City of College Park, Prince George’s County and Frederick, Maryland. For more detail about these studies, see the EDA website, http://umdedauniveritycenter.com.

The EDA center also created teaching modules on location quotients, shift share analysis, and hot spot analysis that are posted on the Center’s website (see above). Masters students in the URSP City and Regional Economic Development course applied this analysis to the National Business Park in Howard County, the Carroll Camden Industrial area in Baltimore, Allegany County, industrial areas in Washington, D.C., and the Research Triangle in North Carolina. An example of one study area, conducted by master’s student, Ashley Sampson, is shown here. This class was conducted as a global classroom with the masters in economics students from the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Above: Razia Choudry, Ken Firestone, Cole Greene, and visiting schol-ar Kuiqi Yang in the Spring ‘15 URSP 661 – Economic Development course conducted jointly with the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Left: map of Caroll-Camden Industrial Area in Baltimore, Md, the study area URSP students were focusing on during the course.

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G R A D U AT I O NCongratulations Class of 2015

MCP 2015 GRADUATESChristopher Allen

David DoNicholas FinioKatie Gerbes

Brian GoodsonHaley Harned

Lyneshia JacksonMatthew Jones

Tania Celis LeyvaAngela Martinez

Chelsie MillerRyan RattanniPatrick ReedJohn Salzman

Ashley SampsonAllison Santacrue

Congratulation to this years MCP graduates!May 21st in the Dekelboum Concert Hall at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

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URSP ANNUAL AWARDS

LARRY REICH AWARDLarry Reich was Baltimore City Department of Planning Director from 1965 to 1990 and acentral figure in the City’s down Renaissance, a proponent of community-based planning andneighborhood initiatives, and an opponent of proposed highways that would have obliteratedsome of Baltimore’s most historic neighborhoods. The Larry Reich Award is given annually toa M.C.P. student who has shown initiative and leadership in an area of urban revitalization oreconomic development. ASHLEY SAMPSON

ROBERT JANES AWARDRobert Janes was a University of Maryland Sociology professor who created the University’sUrban Studies program. Responding to the urban unrest of the 1960s, he established a broadmulti-disciplinary program aimed at preparing practitioners who could improve city conditions.The Robert Janes award is given to an URSP graduating student for contributions to the missionof the Urban Studies and Planning Program. MATTHEW JONES

AICP AWARDThe American Institute of Certified Planners Award is for achieving the highest point averagewhile completing the Master of Community Planning degree from the Urban Studies and Planning Program. The award acknowledges the student’s commitment to scholarship and academicexcellence. ALLISON SANTACREU

MELVIN LEVIN OUTSTANDING MCP STUDENT AWARDDr. Levin was chairman of the Urban Studies and Planning Program from 1978 to 1989. Thisaward recognizes the student’s high level of scholarship, as well as the student’s commitment toenhancing the quality of the Program. The student epitomizes the planning student we seek torecruit and ultimately graduate into the professional planning field. ANGELA MARTINEZ

SAMUEL J. LEFRAK AWARDSamuel J. Lefrak was one of the foremost leaders in the housing industry of the 20th century.He is credited with making several important contributions to urban revitalization in New YorkCity. This award is presented to a MCP student in recognition of the student’s scholarship andcommitment to the vision and goals of the planning profession. PATRICK REED

URSP OUTSTANDING GRADUATE ASSISTANT AWARDThis award is presented to a graduating student in Urban Studies and Planning whose workperformance as a Graduate Research Assistant and/or Teaching Assistant has been outstanding.CHELSIE MILLER

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STUDENT PLANNING ASSOCIATIONYEAR IN REVIEWIt was a busy year for the Student Planning Association’s (SPA) 2014-2015 academic year. The year was filled with several professional and career development events scatered to student in-terests. SPA hosted their annual Career Panel and Resume Clinic in which several program alumni stopped by to guide current students in their career planning and assisted them in improving their resumes.

During spring term, SPA launched their “Lunch with an Alum” initiative in which small groups of students visited alumni at their place of work for lunch and a discussion. Student formed affinity groups with different planning foci including, housing, transportation, economic development , and environment. In addition, several SPA students made their way to the Pacific Northwest for APA’s Annual Conference in Seattle. Many presented their studio and capstone projects, volunteered at the conference, and networked with planners from across the nation. SPA also brought students closer together through their monthly social happy hours.

This past August, SPA welcomed the new URSP class of 2017 at the URSP Bootcamp training. Several second year students talked to the incom-ing class about their summer internship experi-ences.

SPA is looking forward to the 2015-2016 aca-demic year. They are planning on hosting panel discussions, taking a field trip to Baltimore, host-ing a movie and trivia night with area student planners, and continuing their “Lunch with an Alum” program.

Keep up to date with the latest SPA activities and events on our Facebook page.

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SPA Organizes “Lunch with Alums”By: Dr. Alex Chen

Our inaugural “Lunch with Alums” program was agreat success. Last Spring, small groups ofstudents met informally with alums to talk aboutthe profession and practice. In total over 30students met with 10 different alums to chat aboutplanning over lunch, coffee or drinks. We areespecially grateful to alums Michael Weinberger,Foursquare ITP; Riane McWain, CommunityPreservation and Development Corporation; andAimee McHale, National Housing Trust, for sponsoring a lunch for our students. The program is designed to be flexible, respond to a mutual interest and require minimal effort.

STUDENT PLANNING ASSOCIATIONSPA Hosts Annual Alumni

Career Panel and Resume Clinic

The Student Planning Association (SPA) held its Annual Career Panel and Resume Clinic on March 4th, 2014. The panel consisted of UMD Alumni representing various areas in the planning field. Panelist first described their career journeys and then opened the discussion to questions related to careers, jobs, trends in planning and more. After the event, panelists reviewed students’ resumes.

Above: Amee McHale (center), Assistant Vice President of the National Housing Trust with URSP students at a “Lunch with Alums” event

Above, left: Tanya Allen (MCP, 2016) meets with Julie Herlands (MCP, 2001), Principal, TischlerBise

Above, right: URSP students Zack Rockwell and Andrea Haller receive resume feedback from URSP Alum Peter Hadley (MCP ’13)

Bottom, left: URSP Alums Allison Ladd (MCP, 2001), Michael Wein-berger (MCP, 2010), Dan Taylor (MCP, 2013), Ted Van Houten (MCP, 2013), and Amber Wendland (MCP, 2013) at the SPA career panel.

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URSP STUDENTS GIVE PRESENTATIONS IN SEATTLEBrian Goodson presented his research project “Marcellus Shale Hydrofracking In Pennsylvania: A Look at Hotspots and Pollution Control Centers” during APA’s poster sessions at the 2015 American Planning Association Conference. Brian’s project explored the growing hydrofracking industry in Pennsylvania – an unconventional well-drilling technology that uses a mix of pumped water, chemicals and sand in order to crack open underlying shale in order to release natural gas.

The goal of the project was to better understand the relationship between hydrofracking wells and local zoning. In addition, the project sought to determine optimum waste facility location based upon the distribution of wells. Brian’s project concluded that hydrofracking wells were clustered in municipalities with no zoning ordinances and his research identified those areas that need to be better served with wastewater treatment centers.

Brian Goodson presents his project during the poster session at APA’s Annual Conference in Seattle.

Left to Right: Patrick Reed, Ashlee Sampson, Mandi Solomon, Brian Goodson, Angela Martinez, and Katie Gerbes at the 2015

APA Conference.

Other URSP students presented at the APA conference as well. Katie Gerbes ('15) and Mandi Solomon (’15) presented their South African international studio project; Patrick Reed (’15) presented his project about the bargain-burden index and high quality schools in Montgomery County; Ashley Sampson (’15) and Angela Martinez (’15) presented their Lyttonsville studio project about the Purple Line.

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REFLECTIONS ON ULI COMPETITIONPatrick Reed Talks About His Experience

Q: As a planner on the team, describe your role and contri-bution to the project.

Reed: As the team planner, I probably had the most varied workload of our team. The architects essentially took on design. Our real estate developer primarily focused on the financing. As the team planner, I worked on a number of different aspects related to the project that had an impacted design and financing. I’ll enumerate them below.

• I researched New Orleans zoning regulations and figured out ways to address, or at the very least financially account for, non-compliance or zoning amendments in our proforma.

• I also worked as an advocate for the community. Our group had quite a bit of discussion about affordable housing as a mech-anism to generate equity for current residents of our planning area, or whether it was more important to ensure affordability in perpetuity. I had to push for the latter, and the team was able to come up with some compromises regarding our design.

• As for funding public benefits, such as open space, civic build-ings, etc., I pinpointed public subsidies for our real estate devel-oper; for example, New Market Tax Credits and HOME loans.

• Finally, I functioned as the team leader. Our team included five strong personalities, so I worked hard to keep myself in check, objective about differences among my team members, and also kept an eye on team dynamics. The competition is fairly intense, so this was important.

Q: Can you describe the Tulane/Gavier and Iberville neighborhood? What are the challenges that face those neighborhoods?

Reed: The site lies at the intersection of a number of neighbor-hoods. Its main challenges included: addressing treatment of the neutral ground underneath I-10; maintaining affordability in city with intense demand for housing; deciding the appropriate scale of design that complements the historic character of the neighborhood without compromising profitability; embracing history and culture with the understanding that a return to historical urban forms is unlikely and not feasible from a market perspective; and fostering economic and social resilience among residents, which includes reducing the impact of major weather events.

Q: What was the most challenging part in coming up with a design for those neighborhoods?

Reed: We spent a long time debating whether or not we should remove a specific off-ramp that was limiting our design’s poten-tial. This was a tough call for a number of reasons. First, removal meant we’d have to finance demolition. Second, the majority of freight entering New Orleans’ CBD and the French Quarter use the off ramp for access. Third, the off-ramp was not pinpointed for removal in the various studies floating around out there for the Claiborne Corridor.

Q: What advice do you have for UMD students interested in participating in the competition next year?

Reed: The competition is very intense. Reflect whether or not you’re up for it before you apply. I took two weeks off of work for the first round, but for the finalist round I worked five days per week while simultaneously managing a full credit course load. The nights I wasn’t in class, I was working on ULI. During the weekends, I was working on ULI. When I slept, which wasn’t often, I was dreaming of ULI. It really consumes most of your attention. I wouldn’t have been able to manage all of my com-mitments had it not been for the flexibility of my workplaces, professors, and family.

Have fun! Winning is great, but feeling good about your final product and your team is better.

– Patrick Reed

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CLASS OF 2016 STUDENT PROFILES

Ashlee Nicole Green (MCP, 2016)

Maha Tariq (MCP, 2016)

Amina Mohamed (MCP, 2016)

Max Pastore (MCP, 2016)

Ashlee is a second year planning student in the URSP program. She is originally from Gary, Indiana and attended Indiana University for her undergraduate degree in Journalism and African-American/African Diaspora Studies and minored in Latino Studies. She decided to pursue a degree in Community Planning after her previous work experience at an apart-ment leasing firm. She was intrigued by the costliness of housing and the number of aban-doned homes and buildings in Indianapolis. This sparked her interest in urban planning and she hopes to work for HUD, a lobbying firm for affordable housing or a non-profit. Outside of class, Ashlee likes to read, do some online shopping, interior decorating and go out to brunch. A fun fact: Ashlee wanted to be a NASCAR driver when she was a kid.

Max is a second year student in the planning program. He earned his undergraduate de-gree at Maryland in Architecture. Max wanted to continue is higher education in planning after taking an introductory planning course with Professor Emeritus Bill Hanna. Studying the details of architecture while simultaneously taking more classes with Professor Hanna led him to think that architecture wasn’t the right built environment scale to study. Rather than focusing on a specific building, he was more interested in the workings of city around it. Max has spent the past year as a graduate assistant for the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commis-sion in Prince George’s County where he learned the importance of community engagement and promotion and the need for increased collaboration between government agencies. Outside of work, Max enjoys making trips to new cities and neighborhoods and discovering the variations in built environment. A fun fact: Max often makes these excursions by motorcycle.

Amina is a second year student in the planning program and has lived in Laurel, MD for most of her life. She was a Terrapin for her undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture and is now a dual degree master student in Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture. While pursuing her degree in Landscape Architecture, Amina became extremely interested in projects on a city and re-gional scale, especially relating to environmental policy and community engagement. She believes that the positive progression and development of cities requires thoughtful foresight on economic development, forward thinking policies, and active community engagement. Amina is currently an intern with Mahan Rykiel, a local Baltimore Landscape Architecture, Urban Design and Planning firm. After graduating, she hopes to pursue a career that incorporates the principles of landscape architecture and planning with her deep humanitarian interests. Outside of class, Amina enjoys working on creative side projects in photography and theater projects. A fun fact: she firmly believes avocados can brighten any day.

Maha is a second year student and is pursuing a dual degree in Community Planning and Historic Preservation. Maha is originally from Lahore, Pakistan where she completed her under-graduate degree in Architecture. After she graduated she worked on the “Sustainable Development of the historic Walled City of Lahore” with an NGO, Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in Pakistan. Maha’s interest in community planning grew while working with AKDN amidst a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, social mobilizers and planners and learned about planning’s relationship to architecture, sustainability and preservation. Last spring, Maha worked as a graduate assistant for the National Capital Regional Office of the National Park Service (NPS) to update the List of Classified Structures (LCS). A fun fact: Maha is a talented painter without any formal training!

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHTTANYA SAYYED (MCP, 2016)

Tanya Sayyed is a second year URSP student and has spent the last seven months working on her independent research project and interning in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Her research intent was to look at local and international projects aimed at empowering girls and women, with a focus on health, education, and employment.

In doing her research, Tanya started to research the local Women’s Health and Development orga-nization in Ethiopia and participated in monthly women-led community planning meetings in nearby neighborhoods. Tanya describes the government’s Health Extension Program as a “system that organiz-es communities with groups of five women address-ing five agenda topics at a more reachable scale of one group responsible for every 25 households. One of the five women is the leader.”

This program was developed for inner city areas of the capital andwas targeted for vulnerable communities. The following is how Tanya, in her journal, describes her experience attending these community meetings:

“I have attended numerous meetings over the months, and have visited the community causally as well. While I must ask a friend for translations of the Amharic discussions I have observed, even without translation I can understand the frustrations these women feel with the in-numerous so-cio-economic challenges they have faced; but more importantly, I can feel their conviction to tackle these challenges with strength, grace and dignity for themselves and their children. The passion with which they express themselves while discussing plans to pool money for needed improvements , or to attend training sessions for self-employment opportunities, or to form groups of volunteers for neighborhood clean-up shifts and groups to protect girls walking home at night needs no translation.”

In addition to her independent research, Tanya was able to intern with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural, Commun cation, and In-formation Organization, Liaison Office to the UN Economic Commission to Africa. Here, she shifted gears from learning about local grassroots commu-nity planning to international organization planning efforts in environmental planning issues. These issues included national and regional “green schools,” rain harvesting, eco-tourism, and reforestation projects for carbon sequestra-tion projects.

Tanya Sayeed (pictured in red) travles through Amhara, Tigrey and Oromia regions for her research.

Tanya Sayyed is pictured here having coffee withcommunity members at WHDA bi-monthly, women led community meetings.

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2014 - 2015 STUDIO COURSESTransportation Planning

Transportation was the major theme of two URSP studio courses in the 2014-15 academic year. The summer 2014 studio, led by URSP program director Jim Cohen and Professor Gerrit Knaap, focused on a range of issues related to one of the stations along the planned 16-mile Purple Line light rail line planned to link Bethesda, MD in Montgomery County to New Carollton, MD in Prince George’s County. The Fall 2014 studio, co-led by URSP assistant professor Hiro Iseki and adjunct faculty member Val Lazdins, proposed master plans for two different Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor and station areas in Montgomery County. The following are highlights of each of these two studio projects.

The summer 2014 studio report was the result of arequest by some residents located in the unincorporated community of Lyttonsville (pop. of about 9,100, located in the Silver Spring area) to have our students provide ideas and recommendations related to the new station’s location and its impact on the community. The students interviewed Lyttonsvville residents and business owners,County and State planners, and other individuals to gain their perspectives on their concerns and hopes for the new station. They researched “best practices” that could result in positive impacts on community connectivity (though road improvements, creation of pedestrian walkways and bike paths); “placemaking” (such as creation of a public plaza

adjacent to the station and a walking tour that would highlight the community’s origin as an African American community and other historical features); environmental improvements (such as improved stormwatermanagement); and economic preservation (i.e. maintainingenhancing the community’s job-rich light industrial area and promoting greater compatibility of local industry with the adjacent residential neighborhoods).

Students who created the Lyttonsville studio report were: Paulo Couto; Jenna Dublin; Lyneisha Jackson; Matthew Jones; Thomas Leonard; Angela Martinez; Chelsie Miller; Alexandra Nassau-Brownstone; John Salzman; Ashley Sampson; Terra Sivertsen; and Stacy Weisfeld. The full report – Lyttonsville and the Proposed Purple Line Station: Honoring the Past and Planning for the Future -- is available online at arch.umd.edu.

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2014 - 2015 S T U D I O C O U R S ETransportation Planning

The Fall 2014 studio product consists of two final reports, containing analysis and recommendations for two different Bus Rapid Transit corridor and station areas in Montgomery County. The origin for the studio topic was the Montgomery Coun-ty Council’s approval in 2013 of the Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan, which recommends implementation of a 102‐mile bus rapid transit network comprising eleven corridors and a Corridor Cities Transitway. The County’s plan also calls for expanding the right‐of‐way for the CSX Metropolitan Branch to enable enhanced MARC commuter rail service, and it also designates 24 additional Bicycle–Pedestrian Priority Areas (BPPAs). The County’s functional master plan was the result of its planning leadership’s belief that an expand-ed transit network is necessary for achieving the County’s land use, environmental, and economic development goals, and that such a network would make transit a reliable alternative to driving in the County’s developed core.

The Fall ’14 studio report actually consists of two plans --one for the Aspen Hill PBBA Sector, and the other for the Rock Spring BPPA. Each of the reports is a detailed plan that contains the follow-ing: a vision statement; the planning historical background of its area’s BPPA; and analysis and recommendations for land use and zoning, trans-portation, environmental sustainability, urban de-sign guidelines, and implementation. Students who created the Aspen Hill PBBA sector plan proposal were Tania Celis, Matthew Folden, Brian Good-son, Haley Harned and Uri Pasternak. Authors of the Rock Spring BPPA Sector Plan proposal were Zachary Chissell, David Do, Rosanne Ferruggia, Nick Finio, and Patrick Reed. The report is available online at arch.umd.edu/ursp

Above: Rendering created by URSP students of a complete street design for Aspen Hills in the future.

Above: Map created by URSP students of the Aspen Hills study area.

Note: At the time that he co-taught the Fall 2014 studio course, Val Laz-dins was head of Montgomery County’s Research and Special Projects division within the Maryland National-Capital Planning Commission. In June of 2015, he was hired by Howard County to be their Director ofPlanning and Zoning. Congratulations to Val!

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ALUMNI SPOTLIGHTCharles Whitney Noble III, Class of 2010

By Maggie Haslem

Charles Noble (MCP ’09) sees opportunity as the great equalizer. A graduate of the UMD Urban and Commu-nity Planning Program, Charles—who also has his JD from The Ohio State University (OSU)—is the Program Manager for the Boys & Men of Color Initiative at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State. Through Kirwan, Charles is leading the charge on a pivotal social initiative: to create a foun-dation of opportunity for black youth through the program, More Than My Brother’s Keeper (MTMBK). MTMBK is a community outreach program that pro-vides mentorship, experiential learning, parent engage-ment and a variety of services to young men, ages 10-14, in two of the most vulnerable zip codes in the south Columbus area.

Charles started at the Kirwan Institute in 2012 as a legal policy analyst, working on diversity and inclusion issues in higher education and cutting his teeth on the land-mark U.S. Supreme Court case, Fisher vs. UT Austin. A large portion of his work now, in addition to MTMBK, relates to the social determinants of infant mortality in communities of color, specifically why rates seem to be higher for African American and Hispanic families. Charles credits his planning background with allowing him to understand how institutions, policy and history work together to produce contemporary, negative effects on society. “Planning has helped me take the individual decision-making out of the equation and really under-stand that folks are situated in institutions, and that where they are situated affects their outcomes.” Below, Charles talks about the More Than my Brother’s Keeper model, the rewards of his work and how race is a state of misperception:

Q: Talk a little bit about More Than My Brother’s Keeper

Noble: More than my Brother’s Keeper is an iteration of the national program, “My Brother’s Keeper,” initi-ated by the White House to address the disparities in opportunity facing boys and young men of color. Our pilot program launched in September 2014. We focus on black males, 10-14 that come from a family 200% or more below the poverty line. The program has three main components: experiential learning, parent engage-

ment and a mentoring component. The experiential learn-ing aspect addresses two important aspects for these kids: building the soft skills that they may not be able to get in the same way that their suburban counterparts; and to offer opportunities for these kids just to be kids. These young men have to have this “grown man persona” because of some of the issues they deal with. The violence is chronic. The lack of opportunity is chronic. These are the stories that happen in Baltimore, Columbus, Chicago, and I think many folks just are not aware of them.

In my experience before this program, I worked to inform policy through dialogue and through applying different lens-es, but this has given me a completely different perspective on what it is going to take to move people along this continuum of poverty. The parent engagement portion, which involves connecting parents with resources and services, tries to help move them through that continuum and out of poverty. We understand that if we’re not working with the parents, the force of traction that we’re gaining with the kids isn’t going to hold.

My staff doesn’t facilitate programming; we are the adminis-trative arm behind the scenes. We’ve partnered with a wide spectrum of services: legal aide services, a furniture bank, a children’s hospital (who screen our kids for early signs of Di-abetes) mental health care—a wide spectrum. We are acting

Charles Noble (MCP 2009) is the Program Maager for the Boys and Men of Color Initiative at the Kirwan In-

stitute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

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ALUMNI SPOTLIGHTCharles Whitney Noble III, Class of 2010

A L U M N I S P OT L I G H TContinued from previous page

as the conduit between the services that people need and the people. Our team works to create multiple touches with these kids and their families throughout the week.

What we are looking to find out is if this collection of out-of-school activity increases in-school outcomes: grades, attendance and behavior are the metrics we are examining. We plan to follow this longitudinally for the next year, but we should have our first benchmark in the next two months. From there, we will know whether we’re making an impact. This is the most amazing opportunity I’ve ever had; we get to focus on folks that are beyond the eight ball in a lot of ways.

Q: Talk about a turning point in your life that influenced your career path.

Noble: I had a lot of opportunity growing up, but my extended family didn’t have the same opportunities I had. My cousin went to jail a few years ago for selling drugs. We grew up together, but his mom suffered from mental issues and substance abuse and there was a lot of instability. I remember reflecting on that as an adult and recognizing the unfairness; he was just as smart as I was, but when he needed the institutional support of school and of society, he just didn’t get it. I have gifts and I have talents, but what makes me unique and what allowed me to get to where I am today was opportunity and what my parents provided me. I want to be able to give back to folks who aren’t in that position.

Q: What do you find most rewarding about your job?

Noble: The most rewarding part of my job is being able to help kids and families believe that their wildest dreams are possible. The other day, a mother said to me, “Charles, I want you to help my son understand that he can go to col-lege, even though we are poor.” It’s those kinds of conver-sations, those seeds that we can sow, that help kids under-stand that, while there are barriers and limitations in life, this isn’t the end of the road for you; there are bigger and better things out there for you.

Q: You recently gave a TED talk on race in America. With the recent events in Baltimore and Ferguson, race is one of, if not the prevailing social issue of our time. Where, do you think, the disconnect lies?

Noble: We don’t necessarily have racial problems in this country, or economic problems or class problems; we have problems that develop in ideological contexts based on race, economy and class; then we go out and recreate the world based on how we understand it to be. It’s those mis-informed ideologies that result in a lot of what we see out in society. People just need to think differently; it can be that simple. If it is terrifying that these things exist in our society, we can go out and educate ourselves about what’s going on and we can start thinking differently about it, but the challenge is our reluctance to step outside of ourselves and into the lives of other people. I think that is a big per-petuator. Fundamentally, people are good-natured; but we don’t have the chance to act on that good nature because we aren’t aware of what the problems are.

Q: What are your hopes for the future of More Than My Brother’s Keeper?

Noble: One of things that we have been racking our brains on is how to keep these kids in the program after they age out. So, we are looking to develop an alumni component, where they can come back and pour their talent and re-sources into other kids. We are also collaborating with the Young Scholars group at OSU, and the county and the city to create smart hand-offs, where older teens would have access to employment opportunities. The goal is to provide as many resources as we can so that we can keep kids, post-14, involved and engaged in a meaningful way.

On a grander scale, we hope to create a national model of the work that we are doing. More Than My Brother’s Keep-er is the first entity in the country to be actively engaging in the national initiative; many of the others are still in the planning phase. We plan to work with other cities as well on their programs.

Q: What inspires you?

Noble: People inspire me. It’s the untapped potential in people that I want to help draw out. That openness that these people share with us every day is such a precious thing that we have and so because of that, we have a re-sponsibility to go out and tell their stories in ways that will bring attention to the issues that are affecting them. I think it’s the struggles of people on a day-to-day basis that inspire me to go out and do this kind of work.

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Willow Lung Amam

Willow celebrated her second year as a faculty member at her alma mater. While working on her book on Asian American placemaking and the politics of development in Silicon Valley suburbia, she also pursued research related to immigration in American suburbs, including investigations of multigenerational housing development and suburban immigrant faith institutions. The bulk of her research focused on the impact of suburban redevelopment and retrofit projects on disadvantaged communities in the Washington, DC area. Relatedly, she completed, along with Casey Dawkins and Gerrit Knaap, projects to develop affordable housing and equitable development strategies for Langley Park, a largely low-income, immigrant community near the university. With these colleagues and Ph.D. student, Eli Knaap, Willow has also been researching how residents perceive of opportunity in neighborhoods in Baltimore. Willow’s research was supported by the MAPP Junior Faculty Research Grant, UMD’s ADVANCE Interdisciplinary and Engaged Research Seed Grant, the Maryland Department for Housing and Community Development and the Environmental Protection Agency. It appeared in the Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of Planning Education and Research, an edited volume, Making Suburbia: New Histories of Everyday America, and a recent op-ed in the Baltimore Sun. She presented her research at American University’s Metropolitan Policy Center, he American Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) and Urban Affairs Association conferences, and a symposium organized by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education (NCSG) on transit and urban form in Paris.

In the classroom, Willow taught “Planning and Design in the Multicultural Metropolis,” a course she introduced toURSP, and “Community Social Planning,” which was taught for many years by now retired Professor Howell Baum.Both classes participated in the inaugural year of UMD’s Partnership for Active Learning in Sustainabil-ity (PALS)Program, a university-wide initiative meant to the harness the expertise and energy of faculty and students to helpMaryland communities become more sustainable. She also taught two undergraduate courses, “People, Planet andProfit: Building Sustainable Places,” and “Diversity and the City.”Willow became affiliate faculty in NCSG and the Asian American Studies Program. She also holds affiliate or associate positions in UMD’s American Studies department, the Center for Race, Gender and Ethnicity, and theMarylandPopulation Center. She was honored by her selection to participate as a fellow in UMD’s Advancing Faculty DiversityProgram and ACSP’s Junior Faculty of Color Workshop.

Alex Chen

Alex Chen continues to teach the research methods course, He continues to work on activities focused onoutreach and community building. He managed the third annual campuswide 2014 Code for Community IICompetition with $1750 in cash prizes; he continued his Connecting Children to Community effort, with SidwellFriends School with planning student Andrea Haller. The Video Wall: Diversity in Urban Planning continues withplanning students Pranjali Rai and Andrea Haller.

Jim Cohen

Jim continues his run as program director, approaching Marie Howland’s record for longest term of service as URSP leader. He is teaching four classes in the upcoming year, including an undergraduate course entitled “The Sustainable City: Exploring Opportunities and Challenges.” This summer he and master’s student Emma Prindle worked on a paper exploring future electricity production strategies for the global cities ranked in the 2015 Ar-

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FACULTY UPDATES2014 - 2015 Academic Year

cadis Sustainable Cities Report’s as the top 20 in the “Planet” (i.e. environmental ) category. They are explor-ing the degree to which such cities are relying on the burning of biomass and of garbage to generate electric-ity, and the environmental strengths and shortcomings of these strategies. This summer he taught a studio class in which students wrote a sustainability plan for the City of Frederick, MD, utilizing that city’s initial draft plan, selected PALS reports from the 2014-15 academic year (see the PALS update in this newsletter), and their own research on their recommended additional plan elements.

Jim is still resident of Greenbelt, MD, where he leads the Greenbelt Homes, Inc. co-operative’s Buildings Committee. The Co-op membership recently voted to adopt a plan for improving the energy efficiency of the co-op’s vintage (1930s) homes. Jim presided over two of his nieces’ weddings so far this year.

Casey Dawkins

Casey Dawkins has been involved with several projects addressing housing policy in the BaltimoreWashingtonmetropolitan area as well as nationally. His research examining the spatial distribution of Low IncomeHousing Tax Credit properties was recently published in the Journal of the American Planning Association. He has been working with the Baltimore Metropolitan Council for the last year to develop a Regional Hous-ing Plan for the Baltimore region. That plan will be released later this fall. This summer, Dr. Dawkins and colleagues Gerrit Knaap and Willow Lung Amam have secured funding from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to examine the commu-nity-level threats and opportunities facing the residents of Langley Park, Maryland, as the community plans for a new Purple Line rail station. Dr. Dawkins has also secured funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to conduct a national study of the disabled population residing in HUD-subsidized hous-ing to identify gaps in the supply of handicap accessible low-income housing units.

Chengri Ding

Chengri Ding teaches URSP courses in the microeconomics of planning (including location theory) and urbaneconomics. He was invited to contribute an article to an edited book “The Oxford Companion to the Eco-nomics of China,” by Oxford Press. The contributors to the book include four recipients of The Nobel Prize in Economics and renowned academics from top universities from China, Europe, and North America. The book provides a collection of new perspectives on the Chinese economy’s past, present, and future, covering Chi-na’s aggregate performance, the main sectoral trends, and issues of inequality and environment. Chengri’s paper focuses on issues and challenges in land policy. He also advised the 2014 Beijing Urban Master Plan Modification by Beijing Urban Planning Commission and serve as an expert witness.

Chengri worked with Ph.D. student Yu Qiao on the impact of employment centers on new firms’ survival by using a Hazard model. The research results suggest that the chance of new firms’ survival is high if they are located inside major employment centers and the effect fades away with the age of new firms. He presented a paper on this topic at the 2014’s Annual Conference of Regional Science Association International. Another paper with Ph.D. student Zhi Li focused on the relationship between city size and city growth in China, and was presented at the 2014 Annual Conference of Regional Science Association International.

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Marie HowlandMarie Howland has received a grant from campus to test a “global classroom” with the Higher School of Economics in Russia. In combination with Professor Leonid Limonov she will teach a joint economic develop-ment class that examines the job creation and innovation of industrial districts. The Russian students from the Higher Economics University will meet “on-line” with the University of Maryland students using Adobe Connect in the spring semester of 2015. She also continues as Co-Director with Dr. Scott Dempwolf for the U.S. Economic Development Administrations University Center, a five year grant to Urban Studies and Planning. A current project of the EDA University Center is the Community Economic Development Study for St. Mary’s County, Maryland. For more information about the Center, go to http://www.umdedauniversitycenter.com/. In addition, she is teaching Economics for Planners in the Fall. She continues to direct the Urban and Regional Planning Ph.D. program for the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.

Hiro Iseki Hiro Iseki, Assistant Professor in URSP with a joint appointment with the National Center for Smart Growth(NCSG), has been active in several research projects in the past year. Hiro published with his colleagues at NCSG a paper in the journal Transport Policy, which uses a freight transportation model to examine the im-pacts of three different freight policies on the transportation network. In addition, the paper with the former master’s student Matt Tingstrom was recently published in the journal Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. This study proposes a new spatial analysis method to incorporate topography/terrain, street network, presence of intersections in the bike-shed analysis, using cyclists’ energy consumption to travel as travel im-pedance, rather than distance or time. (The journal publisher, Elsevier, provides a free access to the article by October 13, 2014.) Hiro presented this paper, as well as two other papers, in the 12th World Conference on Transportation Research (WCTR) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in July, 2013. He also attended the Transportation Re-search Board (TRB) 93rd Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January, 2014, to present two papers. Hiro and his colleague at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, contributed to Encyclopedia of Transportation, Social Science and Policy, published by the SAGE Publications, writing two sections about “Rail Transit Systems, Worldwide” and “Parking Enforcement”. In terms of on-going research, Hiro recently completed a study that examines the effect of gasoline price on transit ridership, using advanced econometric methods. The report of this study has been recently accepted by Mineta Transportation Institute and is forthcoming. He is also conducting research on: (1) the distribution of firms across the Washington DC-Maryland region in relation to Metro stations; (2) perceptions of transit service; and (3) a model to predict rail transit ridership in response to land use changes.

In the 20013-2014 school year, he continued to teach two transportation-related courses: (1) Transportationand Land use and (2) Urban Transportation Policy and Planning with emphasis on economics and finance. Healso taught with his PhD student, Robert Jones, a session on “Introduction to Quantitative Skills” in the URSPBootcamp, which was provided for the first time to incoming students in the summer 2013 and had a hugesuccess to helpthem prepare for regular course work in the URSP program.

Gerrit Knapp As last year, Gerrit spent much of last year continuing projects begun in previous years. The book from the con-ference on planning for states and nation-states was finally published by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. Promotional events were held at the APA conference in Seattle and the Meetings of the European Schools of Planning in Prague. The Baltimore Regional Sustainable Communities Plan was released in June and featured many maps and analyses produced by NCSG students and staff. The Purple Line Corridor Coalition took a bit

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FACULTY UPDATES2014 - 2015 Academic Year

of a break while waiting for Governor Hogan to decide whether to continue with the transit project. With his approval, the PLCC plans to reengage in developing a community development strategy for the corridor in the coming year. URSP alumnus Jason Sartori will lead another Makeover Montgomery symposium in early May 2016. And with Uri Avin and others, Gerrit helped to launch the inaugural year of the Partnership for Action Learning (PALS) in Frederick and College Park; PALS will begin its second year in Howard County and Baltimore City in Fall. The scenario planning initiative called PRESTO, is advancing nicely with support from the Town Creek Foundation and the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Lab in Annapolis. This intensive modeling exercise is intended to offer new insights into how best to foster sustainability in the Baltimore-Washington Corridor. Gerrit is now the grandfather of four.

Chao Liu Chao Liu developed a new course: URSP 688L Planning Technologies which was taught for the first time inthe Spring 2013 semester. She collaborated with her colleague, Eli Knaap, to redesign this class by using blend-ed learning techniques for the Fall 2014 class. This course provides an introduction of several basic technolo-gies needed by planners, with a special focus on GIS, as well as concepts and knowledge to evaluate a variety of technologies (blogs, social-networking tools, video-sharing, on-line survey, etc.) in order to select the bestapproach for particular tasks in the whole planning process. The blended learning approach will offer MOOC-style on-line lectures, demonstrations, and problem-solving webinar discussions with peers and instructors.In addition to her teaching experience, Chao is working on several projects. One is the Opportunity Collabo-rative project funded by the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC). The Opportunity Collaborative is the consortium charged with developing the Regional Plan for Sustain-able Development (RPSD) for the Baltimore region. The consortium is comprised of 26 members including local governments, state agencies, universities and nonprofit organizations. Over the process of developing theRPSD, opportunity mapping is a GIS-based tool to analyze a variety of opportunities at the neighborhoodlevel that exist throughout the region. Understanding the disparities of the access to different opportunitiesis a crucial step to developing the RPSD and further helps the Opportunity Collaborative to connect housing,transportation and workforce development in the region. Chao wrote several project reports and researchpapers and presented the project results at many conferences. Chao is also working on several projects for the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT). She is collaborating with some col-leagues to work on a poli-cy report entitled “Current Conditions, Trends, and Driving Forces affecting Maryland’s Transportation System” that addresses the critical issues of transportation and economy in the state of Maryland. She also conducted a research paper for MDOT that addresses transit ridership improvement and Transit Oriented Development design in Maryland. This work provided policy guidance for the MDOT to promote transit usage. This research paper was submitted to Transportation Research Board (TRB) 2014 for publication review.

In addition, Chao has been conducting multiple research projects that explore the time budget allocation ofindividual travel behavior, transit performance evaluation, transportation energy consumption reduction, andecological driving behavior.

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ALUMNI UPDATESVionna (Jones) Adams, MCP 2001I am currently working in the Facilities Department of Williams International in Walled Lake, Michigan doing project and environmental management. I am also a member of the Multi Modal Transportation Board for Birmingham, Michigan, where I live with my husband, Tres and two daughters, Vivia (2 years) and Beckett (3 months).

Dario Alvarez, MCP 2013After moving to Los Angeles in 2013, Dario Alvarez consulted for the Venice Collaborative, a group of architects and developers who work towards urban infill projects and the sensitive densification of Venice, California. In 2014, Dario took a project manager position at the architecture and construction firm Marmol Radziner, where he worked on various projects including a winery, historic restoration, offices and a recording studio. In November of 2014, Dario married Sarah Rodman in the Santa Monica Mountains. Currently, Dario is engaging with community organizations in East and South Los Angeles around issues of affordable housing

Kayla Gail Anthony, MCP 2014Kayla just celebrated her first year working as an analyst at Brailsford and Dunlavey in Washington, DC. She dove into a myriad of planning projects, including K-12 district and facilities planning, sports venues planning, and economic impact work. Outside of work, Kayla visited San Francisco, Chicago, and Pittsburgh to take in the splendor of urban environments... and enjoy some tasty food! She has continued to serve as a board member for the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Planning Association, putting together opportunities for networking with planners in the region. Connect with her on LinkedIn! https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaylagail

Brent Beane Brent has been working with the Mental Health Association of Montgomery County, MD as a Family Case Manager since January 2014. He has also taken up freelance technical writing and is currently preparing a TAP (Technical Assistance Panel) Report for ULI Washington on “Re-Envisioning Rhode Island Avenue” on redevelopment at and around the Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood Metro Station in NE Washington, DC. The project’s panel featured 11 planning-related professionals from the DC Metropolitan Area who met with local stakeholders, brainstormed together and gave expert recommendations on the Rhode Island Ave NE Study Area. Additionally, Brent is coming upon three years as Vice President of Administration of the University of Maryland School of Architecture’s Alumni Chapter, MAPP+D.

Ilana Branda, MCP 2006Policy and Neighborhood Development Manager, Montgomery Housing PartnershipIlana is leading the policy initiatives at Montgomery Housing Partnership (MHP), advocating on a local, state and federal level on issues related to affordable housing and households with low-incomes. She also leads MHP’s neighborhood development activities supporting multiple neighborhoods throughout Montgomery County as they combat disinvestment and social challenges, When not working, Ilana spends her time in Silver Spring with her husband and three kids.

David Boston, 2012Senior Planner, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. David is currently working with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission in Prince George’s County as a Senior Planner. He’s also attending the University of Maryland again, as a Ph.D. student in Urban and Regional Planning and Design with research specializations in economic development, poverty alleviation, and gentrification. He and his wife, Caitlin, currently live in Frederick with their cat, Zelda, but are hoping to move to Prince George’s County some time in the very near future.

Aviva Brown, 2013 Aviva is currently working at Vantage Point Economic and Transportation Development Strategies as an Associate under the guidance of Jim Prost. IHer work is focused on T ransit Oriented Development economic analysis and provide assistance for real estate market analysis. She works on many different projects at a time, but some of her current efforts include developing a county-level economic development strategic plan and conducting economic analysis around potential light rail stops for the Red Line in Baltimore City. Aviva was recently elected as the Emerging Planners Group Chair for the Maryland American Planning Association Executive Committee. After serving as the student representative last year, she is very excited to have another opportunity to stay involved with the executive committee. II her position she is working to coordinate events and resources for all the new planning professionals in the area and looks forward to working with the Student Planning Association at UMD!

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ALUMNI UPDATES ALUMNI UPDATESJonathan Brown, 2003Jonathan and Samantha recently returned to Richmond, VA. with their daughter Rose who was only 1 year old when they were a part of the Planning program. Rose is now going on 14! Prior to their return to Richmond Jonathan worked for the City of College Park. Now back in Richmond Jonathan has returned to consulting work.

Kellie BrownKellie Brown still works as a long range planner for Arlington County, VA and bikes to work from her house a mile away. Current focus area is preparation for a future planning study on the Lee Highway commercial corridor. Kellie has 3 kids, Sam (7) Ben (5), and Leah Rose (1).

Samantha Brown, 2003Assistant Vice President of Real Estate Development, Community Housing Partners (CHP), a non-profit affordable housing developer. Samantha has been with CHP for 9 years. She manages the development of affordable housing from acquisition through financing, construction, and project close out including both new construction and rehabilitation of existing multifamily properties. Samantha and Jonathan now reside in Richmond, VA with their daughter Rose who was only 1 year old when they were a part of the Planning program. Rose is now going on 14!

Mary Burkholder, 1986Executive Vice President Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation. Mary has worked in economic and community development for more than 25 years first as a local government planner, then a local economic development director, assistant secretary for two different State of Maryland agencies (Business and Economic Development and Housing and Community Development), senior vice president of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)and a consultant for ZHA, Inc. and her own firm, Mary Burkholder Consulting, LLC.

Aimee ChambersAimee Chambers is a Project Director at the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance (GNOHA). In this position, she manages the day-to-day operations of the Road Home Liaison Group; a State funded collaborative of non-profit affordable housing agencies that provide case management and social services to non-compliant Road Home grantees in Southeast Louisiana. The Road Home program has helped many residents of Louisiana affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita get back into their homes, but it has also been wrought with several policy and process issues over the years. As the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, the Road Home Liaisons are working to closeout some of the programs most complicated cases. Aimee joined GNOHA in March 2015, after wrapping up a contract with Broadmoor Development Corporation (BDC) where she worked as the organization’s sole staff member, focused on downsizing, developing and executing a plan to restructure and refocus its activities. Aimee is a NeighborWorks certified housing counselor and is working on obtaining her real estate license.

Robert Church, 1987I graduated from UMCP in December, 1987. I became a licensed attorney in Maryland in 1994 with my first job being a law clerk on the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. I’ve since been admitted to practice in North Carolina and Washington DC. My volunteer work this year is assisting Catholic Charities in Baltimore with pro bono legal services. They have a program to help the state accommodate an influx of 2,800 undocumented children coming to the Maryland from Central America. Many of these children have been abandoned by their parents in Central America. I have experience with family law. Therefore. I am one of many volunteers assisting these children by reviewing their qualifications for special juvenile immigrant visas or asylum claims.

Kenya Covington, Ph.D.Kenya is an Associate Professor in the Urban Studies and Planning Department at California State University, Northridge where she has been for nine years. Previously, was director of the research department at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. in Washington, D.C. where she was responsible for the conceptualization and release of major research studies on black male unemployment, innovative legislation to boost homeownership among renters and the implementation of a health disparities grass root education campaign. Her current research examines the social and economic conditions of at risk populations and considers the effect of social and urban policy responses. Currently, she is documenting how Los Angeles responded to the 2007 housing crisis, focusingon efforts by the city to stabilize neighborhoods after unprecedented foreclosures.

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ALUMNI UPDATESDana Rothstein CraterDana is a Senior Economic Development Associate at IEDC, where she manages a variety of research and advisory service projects. Currently, she leads a nationwide research and knowledge-sharing project in Reshoring American Jobs, sponsored by the U.S. Economic Development Administration; spearheads a project with a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assist a large region of Eastern Kentucky diversify its economy in light of losses in the coal industry; and collaborates on an economic resiliency project involving three counties on the North Carolina/South Carolina border. Dana lives in Wilmington, North Carolina with her husband and daughter.

John CrummI work on a variety of public trails in Macomb County. I am also currently working on the Selfridge Air National Guard Base to secure the shoreline of the base (located on Lake St. Clair) into local public control. Eventually this base will be closed and I want to make sure that the shoreline is in public hands. There are many complications but I look forward to making sure that the public has access to Lake St. Clair.

Matthew Dolamore, 2014National Network Coordinator, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Baltimore, MD. I work with nonprofit partners to develop community-based services for migrants impacted by immigration detention, with emphasis on individuals and families seeking asylum in the US. I am involved in discussions on policy and program implementation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Areas of focus include client housing models, community integration, and organizational development.

Chris Dickersin-Prokopp, 2009Program Analyst. DC Department of Housing and Community Development. Chris lives with his wife and son in DC, where he helps manage the city’s Housing Production Trust Fund and provides policy and program guidance to DHCD.

Fran DohertyLast January 2014, I began working with US Bank as an underwriting on their commercial real estate team. I entered the lending world in order to enhance my financial analysis skills so that I could ultimately return to the affordable housing and community development sphere. In the spring of this year, that opportunity presented itself within the bank. I took a position in US Bank’s Community Development Corporation as a relationship management associate. In this role, Ioriginate and underwrite projects around the country that use New Markets Tax Credits and/or Historic Tax Credits, lend to non-profit affordable housing organizations, such as my previous company Enterprise Community Partners, and other community development investors. The new role also enabled me to move to Portland, Oregon, a city I’ve dreamed about living in since before knowing what an urban planning icon it was.

Jose Dory, 2008I am currently in my second year of getting a second masters degree in Real Estate Development. I hope to graduate in Fall of 2015. I work full-time for the Maryland National Capital Parks & Planning Commission, where have been here since I graduating with my Master of Community Planning degree. I am a transportation analyst planner in the Functional Planning & Policy Division. I monitor, collect, and analyze all types of transportation data and present the information to the Montgomery County Planning Board and County Council in a biennial report that is called the Mobility Assessment Report. I also support various master plans in a transportation analysis capacity. (See Link) - http://www.montgomeryplanning.org/transportation/I am a Baltimore City resident and serve on the Board of a neighborhood association with its aim to improve the quality of life by developing sustainable initiatives for residents in the community. I own an investment property in that neighborhood. I am licensed in Real Estate where, part-time, I serve as a buyer’s or selling agent to clients throughout the DC and Baltimore region. (See Link) http://www.rlathome.com/home/partner-associates/jose-dory-partner-associate/

Steven Gehrke (2011)Doctoral Student, Portland State University.My doctoral studies in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at PSU are focused on active transportation and its relationship with the built environment. Outside of academic research, my time is spent biking, drinking strong coffee, and traveling. This past summer, I visited the Netherlands, Singapore, and Myanmar with my wife, Olivia.

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ALUMNI UPDATESRob GoodspeedRob is in his second year at the University of Michigan. He is continuing his research on new tools for planning, and is teaching courses in GIS, scenario planning, and collaborative planning. He bought a house with his wife Libby last summer in Ann Arbor.

Sarah GreenbergSarah recently relocated to Milwaukee, WI where her husband accepted a position on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Sarah currently serves as Director of Lending for the Northwest Side Community Development Corporation, an economic development agency committed to redeveloping the 30th Street Industrial Corridor by attracting advanced manufacturing back to the inner city. She also joined the board of Historic Milwaukee, Inc. and is working to promote creative placemaking all over the city.

Jaime Fearer, AICP, 2011Planning and Policy Manager, California Walks. Jaime joined California Walks in late June, and her focus is on multigenerational advocacy with the goal to positively influence policy and land use changes that will improve pedestrian safety and walkability across the City of San José and the greater South Bay. Before moving to California, Jaime worked with City of Greenbelt, Maryland, as a community planner where she focused on a number of projects, including working with Greenbelt’s Advisory Planning Board to complete the city’s Pedestrian and Bicyclist Master Plan, implementing Safe Routes to School infrastructure improvements at a local elementary school, and securing a grant to complete a citywide bike share feasibility study.

Danielle Felix, 2009Asset Manager, US General Services AdministrationI supervise the real property capital investment program for the Department of Transportation (DOT), Federal Courthouses, and the Heating Operations and Transmission District (HOTD) located in the National Capital Region (NCR). I also assist with the development of the Capital Portfolio Plan for these agencies in order to reduce their footprint and save federal tax dollars on leases. I recently became a great aunt to Kylie Theresa Shaw, born on October 4, 2014.

Milagro Fisher Senior Affordable Housing Specialist, US Department of Housing and Urban DevelopmentIn 2004, Milagro Fisher joined HUD as a Presidential Management Fellows. Milagro is now a senior affordable housing specialist with over 12 years of affordable housing and community development experience. She is currently responsible for launching HUD’s National Housing Trust Fund. As a HUD-certified affordable housing specialist, she has experience working in the areas of program design and administration, homeownership housing, rental housing compliance, housing rehabilitation and tenant-based rental assistance. Milagro and her family live in Washington, DC. She is expecting their second baby November 2015.

Nicole M. Lacoste Folks, Esq, 2000I have been practicing land use and real estate law in Baltimore City since 2001 and living in Fells Point in the City since 2003. My law practice is based in Baltimore but I’m currently working on several real estate development projects across the country and overseas. I am able to walk to work so that’s a nice way to start and end each workday. Weekends are spent often at our rural cabin just outside of Berkeley Springs, WV where I am consistently intrigued by the local land use issues discussed in the local paper. It is a very different set of issues as compared to urban Baltimore! I am also still teaching “Real Estate Negotiations and Drafting” at University of Maryland School of Law as an adjunct professor.

Alex Lee, 1992 Business Vice President, CH2M HILL, Indianapolis, INTransitioned out of the Washington D.C. area (twenty years), having worked on the Wilson Bridge Project, I-495 Express Lanes and Dulles Metrorail Expansion; relocated to Indiana last year; currently serving as VP for Indiana/Kentucky/Michigan for CH2M HILL and senior technologist for public involvement for large scale transportation for the Midwest.

Brooke (Taylor) FosseyBrooke most recently worked as a Senior Planner at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro). She is currently the primary caregiver for her son and she and her family are in the midst of packing up their life after 11 years in DC and heading north to Boston. She’s excited to explore a new city by foot, bike, bus, and train!

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ALUMNI UPDATESSteven Gehrke, 2011Doctoral Student, Portland State University. My doctoral studies in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at PSU are focused on active transportation and its relationship with the built environment. Outside of academic research, my time is spent biking, drinking strong coffee, and traveling. This past summer, I visited the Netherlands, Singapore, and Myanmar with my wife, Olivia.

Peter Hadley, 2013Financial Analyst, Jones Lang LaSalle. Peter works for the Public Institutions team at real estate professional services firm, Jones Lang LaSalle, where he supports the Department of Defense’s privatized housing portfolio. He lives and works in DC and enjoys riding his bicycle all over town.

Ray Hayhurst, MCP 2011Complete Streets Coordinator, City of Alexandria Department of Transportation & Environmental Services, Alexandria, VA I have been working for the City of Alexandria just over year now, after previously working for the Montgomery County Planning Department and KFH Group. Projects I have been involved in with at the City include the Potomac Yard Metrorail Station, West End Transitway, and future service improvements for the Crystal City-Potomac Yard Transitway on Route 1, the region’s first BRT line. Most recently, I was promoted to the position of Complete Streets Coordinator, where I manage the implementation of various projects to make the City’s streets safer and more accessible for bicyclists, pedestrians, and other users. Still living in and enjoying Washington, DC.

Michael HeltaAfter 3 years of working for the MTA in the Capital Programming department, I was promoted mid-year to manage the Project Development department in the Office of Planning and Programming. Duties include the oversight of the conceptual design and public outreach for major agency capital expansion projects (MARC stations, transit corridors, facilities, etc), initiation and oversight of planning studies (BRT!, Bus On Shoulder!, etc), and whatever else we can think of that will help to position the agency to improve its services in the future. The Professional Association of Young Transportationists (PAYT), a trade organization I helped start in 2013, is officially becoming a YPT chapter this fall. Still living in and loving Baltimore. Still an O’s fan.

Jason HeschI am currently working part time at the Port of Miami as a pier agent. And volunteering at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens in their orchid lab micro propagating Florida native orchids for their Million Orchid project to place orchids in trees in urban areas across the city. And I was a ball person this year and last year for the Sony and Miami Open tennis tournament on Key Biscayne. I also helped out a Miami-Dade County commissioner campaign defeat a disliked incumbent.

Cristina HuidobroI moved back to Chile on April 2014 and started working for Santiago’s Municipality, which is the main one within the Santiago’s metropolitan area. The Mayor appointed me as Master Plan Director of the “Franklin Neighborhood”, an historic and commercial area close to downtown. This means that I am in charge of a comprehensive revitalization of the neighborhood that includes public space, infrastructure, economic development, historic preservation, transportation and community development. Actually, I’ve been using all the skills and tools that the UMD Program gave me. Also I am working with the private sector and the central government trying to bring investment and fresh resources to the area.

Alex Hutchinson, 2012After a year working in the consulting world Alex Hutchinson took a job with The Baltimore Economic Development Corporation in May. In between jobs he toured the midwest with his brother visiting Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit. Alex says that the meals they had were enormous and was surprised by what the cities had in store. In addition to the aforementioned news he recently had an article featured in the May edition of Urban Land Magazine about immigrant investment programs in real estate.

Melanie Isis, MCP 1999I am Executive Director of the Takoma/Langley Crossroads Development Authority, a business association that manages the Takoma/Langley Commercial Management District in Takoma Park, MD. I’m focused on increasing the visibility of the Takoma/Langley Crossroads in the region with a variety of marketing tools, while increasing amenities and maintenance in the District. I am a contractor for the Board of Directors, and succeeded in getting the first budget increases in the organization’s history in 2014, with a three-year bump up in license fees. As a result, the budget rose from $94,000 in FY14 to $145,000 in FY15, and to $228,000 this year, with one more increase in 2016. The increases will allow the organization to expand its programs and

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ALUMNI UPDATESpresence so that when the Purple Line light rail is constructed providing east-west connectivity in the gridlocked DC region, the Takoma/Langley CDA will be able to provide the services that will be needed. Contact me if you have questions/comments at misis@takomalangley.org.

Kate Judson, MCP 2011My husband and I welcomed twin boys - Samuel (Sam) and William (Will) - last October 2014. After taking a few months off from work, I returned to my stormwater management position with the District Department of the Environment in January 2015. In addition to managing the District’s bag law and coal tar pavement product ban programs, I am now also responsible for overseeing the implementation of the District’s Styrofoam ban that takes effect January 1, 2016. Life is hectic but good!

Chuck Kines, MCP 1998Chuck Kines is still the trail planner/coordinator for M-NCPPC Montgomery County Department of Parks. He is currently working on a comprehensive amendment to the Countywide Park Trails Plan, which focuses on both paved and unpaved park trails of countywide significance, and how these trails connect to regional bikeways, regional parks, major employment centers and transit hubs. Chuck and his wife Amy recently launched an educational consulting firm – Ready Aim Teach! And that new business venture is going very well. He still lives in Rockville, and is active in both his sons’ competitive swimming activities.

David Kantor, MCP 2004David Kanthor MCP ‘04 recently changed jobs to take a position with the Philadelphia City Planning Commission as the Transportation Planner for the City of Philadelphia. He also enjoys taking his 2-year-old daughter for rides on the bus and on the back of his bike or adventures with the whole family including a trip to China like they did in April 2015.

Aimee LaMontagne Baumiller, 2004Senior Market Analyst, PNC Real Estate.She celebrated her 10-year work anniversary in September and is enjoying Pittsburgh’s transformation and all it has to offer as the Most Livable City in the continental U.S. Her work at PNC entails analyzing individual commercial real estate transactions for the Bank as well as producing macroeconomic reports on the Multifamily sector. Her reports are published on www.pnc.com/realestate. Her 20-month old daughter, Greta, continues to make life more interesting and fulfilling (and exhausting!).

Alex Lee, 1992 Business Vice President, CH2M HILL, Indianapolis, IN. Transitioned out of the Washington D.C. area (twenty years), having worked on the Wilson Bridge Project, I-495 Express Lanes and Dulles Metrorail Expansion; relocated to Indiana last year; currently serving as VP for Indiana/Kentucky/Michigan for CH2M HILL and senior technologist for public involvement for large scale transportation for the Midwest.

Adam Lindquist, 2010Project Manager, Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, Baltimore, MDSince graduating I have been working on watershed planning in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. I am the Project Manager of the Healthy Harbor Initiative, which aims to make the Harbor swimmable and fishable by 2020. Some of the projects that I have had the good fortune to be involved with include the installation of 2,000 square feet of floating wetlands, working with volunteers to grow over 150,000 oysters in urban waterways, and the construction and installation of a solar-powered water wheel trash interceptor. The Water Wheel project has received national attention and is seen as a realistic solution to removing plastics and other floating debris from the world’s oceans. I am also part of a team that works with communities, environmental nonprofits, and Baltimore City government to improve the quality of stormwater runoff coming from our urban environment through better watershed planning.

Patrick MaierGraduated in 1975. I’m the Executive Director of the Innovative Housing Institute (IHI) www.inhousing.org, a non-profit affordable housing organization that specializes in inclusive land use strategies. We are currently finishing up the Baltimore Regional Housing plan, partnering with UMD’s Center for Smart Growth, BAE Urban Economics and the University of Baltimore. He is also assisting Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development in revamping their Affordable Requirements Ordinance, which has produced substantial “fees in lieu” of affordable housing development but little on-site housing. After spending 27 years in various housing roles working for Montgomery County, my wife Kathleen and I moved our empty nest to Federal Hill in Baltimore, and were charmed by Charm City. We now live in Bolton Hill, and have been e-nested by two of our children, Martin and Elizabeth. Martin’s at UMD’s

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School of Nursing and Elizabeth is starting her new life as a married person with her husband, Rob Leach who is from Wales. They are Baltimore believers and are buying and fixing up some of the elegant homes that have fallen on hard times in nearby Reservoir Hill. We’re keeping it interesting and keeping it urban!

Sunni Massey, 2005Sunni is a Federal Program Officer for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the U.S. Department of Commerce. Her husband and fellow alum, Brian Dylong (2005), is an Assistant Vice President in the FHA Multifamily Underwriting Department at Capital One Multifamily Finance. They continue to live in Hyattsville, MD with their dog, NIMBY, just a stone’s throw from the Architecture Building.

Rachel (Fitzgerald) McNamara, 2007Outdoor Recreation Planner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.As a project manager and technical expert, Rachel works on recreation, land use, and cultural resource issues at federally-licensed hydroelectric projects in the southeast. She and her husband, Doug, live in Hyattsville with daughter, Ella, and a new addition on the way in April.

Christine MelekianChristine Melekian continues to enjoy (and hopefully contribute to!) the rejuvenation of the H Street corridor of Washington, DC. She has 2 sons, Gregory and Nicholas, who are now 17 and 14 respectively. She has been the bookeeper for The Father McKenna Center, a day shelter serving DC’s Ward 6 men in need, for the past year.

Ingrid MendezIngrid is currently principal of Urban Concepts, a multidisciplinary firm based in the Washington DC Metro. Urban Concepts offers Professional Services in all facets of Business, Urban & Regional Planning, Historic Preservation, Building and Engineering Industry (Engineering and Environmental Services, Structural and Building Inspections, Real Estate, Property Management, MGMT Consulting, and International Deployments and Operations). Ingrid established Urban Concepts in 1990, while she was working on her MBA, her clients include national and international private and government entities. You are welcome to browse Urban Concepts: http://a-1urbanconcepts.com

Megan Moriarty, MCP 2008I own & operate the Fenton Street Market, a weekly craft market in downtown Silver Spring. I’ve expanded FSM to include: a vintage market in Takoma Park; an alternative bridal show for local, handmade vendors; various pop up markets around Silver Spring; and an active vendor network practicing real-time micro business development. I’m working with friends on a local blog: Silver Spring Inc. and spend my free time napping & buying presents for my nieces & nephew.

Julie (Mirvis) Morris, AICP, 2005Facilities Planner, Montgomery County Public Schools.Julie has been with MCPS for the past five years and is currently working on planning a new school in Rockville and a classroom addition at Kensington-Parkwood Elementary School. With so much enrollment growth she’s keeping busy projecting for relocatable classrooms and studying options for adding permanent capacity. An upcoming project she is most excited about is the revitalization/expansion of her own neighborhood’s elementary school. In her free time, she writes a blog and is working on a thriller novel with a prison architect protagonist. She lives with her husband and son in Silver Spring.

Marianne NavarroI am continuing my work implementing the Mayor’s Anchor Institution initiative, an economic and community development strategy focused on improving quality of life, addressing public safety issues, and promoting economic inclusion in Baltimore’s neighborhoods. I am also serving on the Mayor’s Grow Baltimore Advisory Task Force. I’m also excited to report that in 2014 I received my AICP certification and was recently awarded a Daily Record Leading Women award for Maryland professionals under 40 years old. My husband John and I are very busy raising our two daughters, Loren (almost 4) and Farah(2) in Baltimore City’s Locust Point community.

Mark NollI recently accepted a new position as a Project Manager for Transportation and Sustainability with the Midtown

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Alliance in Atlanta, GA. I’ll be moving by September.

Jeff La Noue, MCP 1999Jeff continues his work at the University of Baltimore focusing on projects that make the campus buildings and grounds more sustainable. UB’s LEED Gold library renovation, hardscape to native softscape projects, and making UB a “Bike-friendly University” in 2016 are some of the projects Jeff is excited about. La Noue recently joined the Board of Directors of the Baltimore Economy and Efficiency Foundation. Jeff and his wife Malindi (UVA Planning and Architecture graduate) are proud parents of their one year old daughter Saranac. Check out Jeff’s urbanist blog “ComebackCity.us” and look for his posts on the Greater Greater Washington blog.

Mary O’ConnellMary O’Connell currently serves as Program Manager for the Hyattsville Community Development Corporation, addressing community planning and development issues in inner-Beltway communities in Prince George’s County. She is using her planning degree daily at her job and learning how to navigate the relationship between the planner, the developer, and the community resident. If you’re in the area on a Friday, you can sometimes catch the office happy hour at Franklin’s Brewery.

Sean O’NeilI moved to Wilmington, DE in the Fall of 2012. Since then I have worked as a Real Estate Analyst for a consulting company before joining McCormick Taylor as an Environmental Planner in November 2013. This month I left McCormick Taylor and I am currently in the process of deciding between 2 new exciting positions, both with lots of potential. Most importantly, my wife have birth to our daughter Norah Gertrude O’Neill

Oluseyi Olugbenle, 2014As a recent graduate, Oluseyi is excited to work as a Planner at Parsons Brinckerhoff in Washington, D.C. She is currently working on projects including the South Capitol Street Corridor Project, Virginia Avenue Tunnel, BWI Railroad Station, among others. My husband and our energetic and beautiful newborn live in Howard County, Maryland. In my spare time (although nonexistent nowadays), I love to bake, travel and plan events of any kind!

Polly PetersonI am living in Bowling Green, OH and enjoying being able to walk/bike to most of my daily errands. My work consists mainly of teaching part-time in the Department of Environment and Sustainability at Bowling Green SU and doing community/sustainability planning as a consultant (Infinitely Green Consulting). I am currently on a team that is formulating an Area Wide Plan for an industrial brownfield site and adjacent struggling neighborhood in Toledo, OH. Other involvements include the Northwest Ohio Food Council steering committee (our focus is on promoting our local food economy) and the Toledo Lucas County Sustainability Commission. In the near future, I will be offering online coursework in introductory environmental and sustainability studies, as well as online/in-person classes in permaculture techniques.

Graham Petto, AICP, 2011Research Project Coordinator, Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center.In June 2014, I left the Maryland Department of Planning. I have relocated from Baltimore, MD to New Jersey for a position with VTC at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. I am working to support a variety of research projects on transit-oriented development and paratransit for NJ Transit and NJ Dept. of Transportation.

Meghan Powell, 2008. Rail and Transit, Task Manager, Parsons, Washington DC.After working at Jacobs for 12 years, Meghan recently took a new position as task manager for Parsons. She is part of Parsons Rail and Transit Systems group and is working on a general architecture and engineering contract for WMATA. Under this project, Meghan is managing the development of a flood emergency response plan, as well as inspection work for the eventual replacement of WMATA’s faregates. She also has past experience in all stages of rail and transit projects including feasibility studies, planning and final design. Meghan lives in Silver Spring, MD with her two boys.

Jessica Reynolds, MCP 2010Jessica Reynolds has been with the Maryland Dept. of Business and Economic Development since 2011 in the Office of International

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Investment and Trade. Earlier this year, Jessica received a Secretary’s citation for her work with the Department. She continues to serve on the Rockville Historic District Commission and is also participating on the Corridor Advisory Committee for Bus Rapid Transit on Veirs Mills Road in Montgomery County. Jessica is an active member of International Economic Development Council where she recently was invited to serve on the organization’s International Advisory Committee.

Daniel RosenDan continues his career at the Maryland Department of Planning where, among other things, he is staffing Secretary David R. Craig’s Ad Hoc Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) Committee. In an era where public funds are scarce for preserving agricultural and environmentally sensitive land, TDR programs are an attractive alternative. They use private funds to preserve land by allowing a developer to buy development rights from rural landowners in “sending areas” and using them to add extra density in “receiving areas” where development is desired. It’s a win-win-win situation: landowners profit from their land without having to sell it, developers profit from the sale of extra units, and taxpayers preserve land without using tax dollars. However, economics and politics make successful TDR programs rare. Dan is researching another topic to commemorate the centennial of World War I. This one is planning-related: the creation of the British Cemeteries in France and Belgium, especially those designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Jennifer Mizroch Rosenberg, 1992Meetings Manager, Burk & Associates, Inc.I am living in Vienna, VA with my husband and two sets of twins ages 10 and 7. I have been working for an association management company for the past 2 1/2 years managing scientific conference for various associations all around the world. I have been planning conferences for the past 18 years. In my free time in enjoy photography, running and biking.

Kate RubeKate Rube is a Vice President at Project for Public Spaces, a New York City-based non-profit planning, design and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities. Kate manages the organization’s transportation program, developing technical assistance and trainings to help communities foster more livable transportation networks, streets, and transit stops. She also serves as the project manager for several federal technical assistance grants, including with US EPA and the National Endowment for the Arts. Kate lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Brian, their daughter Lilly (2 years old), and pup Lucy. At the end of 2015, she’ll also complete a Master’s in Engineering degree (Transportation Engineering program) from the City College of New York.

Chris RyerChris Ryer began working in community development over 25 years ago at the Baltimore Planning Department. After ten years as a community planner with the Department, he moved to the non-profit sector where he worked for the Trust for Public Lands and a community based organization in southwest Baltimore. In 2002 he returned to the Baltimore Planning Department where he served as Chief of Comprehensive Planning and Deputy Director. He has been the Executive Director of the Southeast Baltimore Community Development Corporation since 2007.

Carrie Sanders, 2005Acting Division Chief, Transportation Planning Division, City of AlexandriaCarrie has worked for over four years with the City of Alexandria focusing on non-motorized transportation, and is currently serving as Acting Division Chief for the Transportation Planning Division, which includes long range transportation planning, parking management, Complete Streets, and Transportation Demand Management. Carrie lives in Montgomery County with her husband Jesse and their children Anna (6), Claire (4) and Ben (2).

Alyssa SeibertAfter living in Maryland and Washington D.C. for my entire life, I’m off to Los Angeles to work in food access and food planning. Previously, I worked for the online farmer’s market in Washington D.C., Relay Foods, and worked as a Transportation Planner with KFH Group, Inc.

Lilly Shoup, MCP 2010After working at the U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the Secretary since graduating from UMD, Lilly just started a new position at Nelson\Nygaard Consulting in the Summer 2015. She is lives in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and

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is excited to continue biking in to work everyday!

James SpatzJim has recently completed his first year at the City of Harrisburg Planning Bureau after graduating from UMD with his Master’s in May 2014. He has helped to administer a newly adopted Zoning Code, and used the City’s ArcGIS Online capabilities to create an interactive, web-based zoning map accessible to any resident for use. Additionally, he has supported the Planning Director in kicking off Harrisburg’s first comprehensive plan effort in 40 years. Throughout the past year he has served as Staff advisor to the City’s Historic Architectural Review Board, Planning Commission, and Zoning Hearing Board. He is looking forward to seeing Harrisburg finally get an updated comprehensive plan in the coming year!

Karin (Foley) Seubert, 2001Karin continues to practice law at Jones, Brower and Callery, P.L.L.C. in Lewiston, Idaho, where she has a general civil litigation practice including many land use cases where her urban planning background continues to be extremely useful. She and her husband Adam are proud parents of Beth (age 5), Ellie (age 4) and newest addition Evelyn (born March 2015).

Steve Stahley, MCP/UMAB 1989Steve currently works at the Mental Health Association of Maryland and serves as the Deputy Director of the Consumer Quality Team (CQT). The CQT visits programs that are funded by Maryland’s Public Mental Health System and interviews adults and youth who are receiving services. The information derived from the qualitative interviews is shared with the programs and with officials of the Maryland Behavioral Health Administration (BHA). Over the seven years of its existence, the CQT has developed into a strong feedback loop for those being served in the State Hospitals and residential and day mental health programs across the state. Steve and his family live in Westminster, Maryland.

Ted Stevens, 2005After nearly ten years in Maryland (that began when I moved to College Park for grad school) I moved back to my hometown in January to take a Planner II position with the New Haven City Plan Department, where I have so far been working with the City Planning Commission and on the Comprehensive Plan update. We decided to keep our home in Baltimore and rent it out, so we we’re still invested in things down there too and are hoping my fellow Maryland planners can continue to improve the city.

Deborah Sward, 2011 Environmental Planner, McCormick TaylorDeborah accepted a new position with McCormick Taylor this year. Her primary responsibility is ensuring that infrastructure projects meet requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Civil Rights Act by evaluating the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of different design scenarios. She serves as consultant environmental manager for the Maryland State Highway Administration, liaises with county and local governments regarding NEPA requirements, and authors NEPA documents for regional projects. She and her fiancé also play acoustic music in the DC / Baltimore area.

Matthew Texler, 2011 Managing Director, Meridian Capital Group, New York, NY. Matthew continues to help sustain the available pool of affordable rental housing in NYC (and beyond). In the last five years, he’s negotiated the terms of over $4 billion in private capital used for the renovation and operations of NYC’s multifamily housing stock. Several notable recent transactions include the Project-based Section 8 complexes at 414-24 West 48th Street and 328-36 West 53rd Street in Manhattan. Additionally, Matthew helped negotiate the recent infusion of renovation capital for a 5,517 apartment portfolio of workforce housing in Hyattsville and Baltimore City.

Louis Thomas, 2012Doctoral Student, MIT. Lou Thomas finished his second year of the PhD program at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, which means that at the age of 36 he is finally done taking classes. He aims to take his qualifying exams this fall, with a first field in City Design & Development, and a second field in Mediated Placemaking - investigating the political economy of how places are both produced and appropriated. In the spring, his goal is to submit a dissertation proposal, which may focus on changing and contested notions of the urban environment as a place for childrearing. This July he presented his paper “Baltimore’s Oldtown Mall: walking on sunshine or the ghost of an everyday neighborhood” at the International Planning History Society Conference in St. Augustine, FL.More importantly, his daughter Nettie Maude is about to turn two in October, and she is the sweetest, smartest child. With his wife Julie and dog Belafonte, they live in a wonderful cohousing community in Jamaica Plain, Boston; which almost makes up for having

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to live in cold, cold New England. If you are ever in the area, please don’t hesitate to look them up. Luckily, they make it back to the mid-Atlantic frequently for Julie to check-in with her home office at the US Department of Transportation and to visit family in Baltimore.

Renee Thompson, 2009MCP, Land Use and Environmental Planning Geographer, US Geological Survey, Chesapeake Bay Program Office.Working as a GIS Analyst to model infill and redevelopment patterns and potential in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed; maintaining geospatial datasets related to protected lands; and serving as Coordinator of the Maintain Healthy Watersheds Goal Implementation team tasked with maintaining healthy waters and watersheds at optimal levels. These areas are important for their contribution to sustaining local social, economic and environmental benefits and contribute to the achievement of Chesapeake Bay Agreement goals. Currently Renee is on maternity leave caring for her newly born daughter Cordelia. She is enjoying time with her now family of four including her almost 5 year old son and husband.

Amber TurnquestAmber has been working as the Planning & Zoning and Floodplain Administrator for Ward County, ND. She serves as a member of the Technical Committee for the Minot Air Force Base Joint Land Use Study, the Steering Committee for Vision West ND, and as an adviser to the Ward County Planning Commission. She was on the development team that won a 2014 Special Achievement in GIS Award from ESRI for a parcel viewer and flood planning viewer designed to provide essential information to the community. Amber lives with her wife in Minot, ND where it is winter 8 months of the year.

Magdalena VicunaI finally obtained my PhD Degree in Architecture and Urban Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with the thesis “The Forms of Residential Density. The case of Gran Santiago, Chile”. I became a Faculty member at the Urban Studies Institute of Universidad Católica where I´m also chief of the Undergraduate Program. We have recently created the urban planning undergraduate degree, first one in Chile, which makes us very proud, as well as challenged!

Gregory Vernon, 2010Fire/Life Safety Liaison Officer, Office of Emergency Management, WMATA.Gregory is responsible for the maintenance and enhancements of several emergency preparedness plans, emergency operations plans, and procedures for the Office of Emergency Management (OEM). Over the past year, Gregory participated in the development of several emergency training exercises, has continuously monitored for severe weather affecting the Washington, DC region and has enriched OEM’s geospatial capabilities.

Stephanie vonFeck, 1996Branch Chief, Environmental Protection AgencyStephanie has spent the past twenty years working with the Environmental Protection Agency on programs that help communities, tribes and homeowners clean up water pollution. She is currently responsible for wastewater infrastructure grant programs that provide first time access to safe drinking water and sanitation for Alaskan Native Villages, Tribes, Territories and communities along the U.S./Mexico Border. She also manages programs designed to improve the sustainability of wastewater infrastructure across the country. Stephanie lives in Laytonsville, MD with her husband, her son and her daughter. She just became a certified open water diver, is a volunteer stream monitor for the State of Maryland, is active on the PTA, and despairs of having enough time for her gardens.

Michael Weinberger, MCP 2010Michael was named Senior Transit Planner and Public Outreach Task Lead at Foursquare Integrated Transportation Planning, based in Rockville, MD in January 2015. Michael provides grant management oversight of 16 advanced bus projects under a $58.8 million federal TIGER grant for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Transportation Planning Board (MWCOG/TPB) and leads public involvement programs for transportation related projects in Fairfax County, VA, Loudoun County, VA, and Charlotte, NC. Michael’s work was featured in last November’s Mass Transit Magazine for an article entitled “Educating the Public About Transit.” Michael lives in Washington, D.C.’s vibrant NoMa neighborhood and enjoys trying new transit systems wherever he travels.

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Chad WilliamsChad has spent the last 12 years working for the Prince George’s County Planning Department, dedicating much of this time to College Park and the University of Maryland as the community planner for the area. He has recently assumed the project manager role for the comprehensive update of the county’s zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations and hopes to usher in a 21st century ordinance that supports economic growth and transit-oriented development among other key goals. Chad and his wife live in Bowie, Maryland.

Tiffany C. Williams, 2008Executive Director, Teach For America-DetroitTiffany is working to impact the social, economic,and education landscape in her hometown of Detroit. In addition to leading the TFA region in Michigan she is active in the community, sits on a number of boards, and serves as the president and co- founder of Advancing Community Through Service (A.C.T.S) not-for-profit. Because of her contributions to the Detroit community, The Michigan Chronicle recently named her to the 2014 40 under 40 class. Tiffany is recently engaged to Thomas Taylor, sergeant with the Detroit Police Department, and is excited about the life they will build together. She is happy to be home with her family serving the city she loves.

Peter WittePete is now a writer of fiction enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He is also the primary caregiver for his two preschool-aged children. His family just moved to the Calvert Hills community in College Park, Maryland, where he spends large sums of time scoping out birds and thinking nostalgic thoughts on walks along the Trolley Trail.

Claire (Schnitzer) Worshtil, MCP 2007Claire is the Senior Program Manager for Land Use at the National Association of Home Builders. She is the primary staff liaison for NAHB’s Land Development Committee and tracks and interprets emerging issues in land use planning, development entitlements, infrastructure finance, and green/sustainable development. She is also Assistant Editor of Best in American Living e-magazine. Claire lives in University Park, Maryland with her husband and two children.

Dongming YinI got back to Beijing and I’ve worked as a senior executive for 2 public companies focusing on real estate management/analysis after my graduation in 2002, the latter one being Jone, Lang and Lasalle. In 2010 I started my own IT company www.gaia.asia to be the first commercial real estate property business intelligence system in its field. My company is beginning to win major real estate holders in China in recent years, and I’m starting to look at business opportunities in the US. I would be especially interested in getting to know any one in the URSP or RED community who is currently connected to shopping mall management/operation.please get connected. mailto:dongming@gaia.asia

Megan ZadeckyFor almost 7 years, I have been working for Booz Allen Hamilton providing environmental policy and program management support to Department of Defense clients. My family (husband and two sons) and I relocated “home” to Pittsburgh almost two years ago (January 2013). I’m enjoying all that Pittsburgh has to offer and getting involved in my local community. I was recently appointed to the Mt. Lebanon Parks Advisory Board and am involved with addressing issues and making recommendations pertaining to the municipalities parks and open spaces.

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If you would like to make a gift to the URSP Scholarship Fund, you may do so online at: http://advancement.umd.edu/giving/fund.php?name=urban-studies-planning-scholarship If you would like to send your check by mail, please send your contribution to: University of Maryland College Park Foundation, Inc.Office of Gift Acceptance4603 Calvert RoadCollege Park, MD 20742-3421

Be sure to include a message in your note that you are contributing to the URSP Scholarship Fund.