The Department as a Third Sector Planner

Abstract

Community-university partnerships are an established concept but are not typically central to the core planning curriculum. This study highlights a model of teaching innovation, Integrated Community Planning Core, where the core directly supports the departmental mission by bridging research and practice. The article explains the curriculum development process and assesses its ability to serve community, student, and faculty needs. Data collected from focus groups, student reflection papers, and practicing planner debriefings demonstrate the model is modestly successful, but adaptations are needed to communicate the value to students, the planning academy, and the university.

Gown Goes to Town: Negotiating Mutually Beneficial Relationships between College Students, City Planners, and a Historically Marginalized African-American Neighborhood

“…Much can be gained when university partners serve as conduits or bridges between the city and the community. Students learning through a community engaged applied planning process that meaningfully incorporates community input has the potential to be broadly beneficial for all parties [11][12][13]. It can provide important applied experiences for students who have not previously engaged African-American community members.…”

“…However, planning and geography faculty, research clusters, and departments have also sought to leverage the institutional resources and capacity of the university to advance community aims through university-community partnerships [7][8][9][10]. Geography and planning educators have emphasized the educational value of applied learning, helping students not only gain technical skills but also empathy for underprivileged communities and understanding of the importance of effective communication processes [11][12][13].…”

Practice-Based Politicization: Planning Reports as Actants in a University–Community Partnership

“…In a broad sense, LCY is borne of an increased emphasis within universities on engaged and embedded scholarship, urban-serving designations, and a long-standing commitment among planning scholars to acknowledge and activate their positionality as participants in applied research settings (Baum 2000; Sletto 2010). It also demonstrates a growing interest of individuals across the university—students, faculty, and administrators—to see the outputs of their research, scholarship, and coursework positively affect their community, an established aim for many planning programs (Ashley and Vos 2015).…”

Educating Planners as Social Entrepreneurs: The Potential of Community-based Professional Training

“…A large amount of research has been devoted to academic programs and the way they shape professional approach (Edwards & Bates, 2011;Friedmann, 1996;Frank, 2006), including the discrepancies between what has been learned in professional training and current theory and practice (Alexander, 2005;Edwards & Bates, 2011). The complexity of the field is often associated with three factors: the diversity of professional localities (Sanyal, 1990;Watson & Odendaal, 2012); the organizational characteristics of planning departments (Ashley & Vos, 2015;Stiftel, 2009); and the way the academic community perceives the profession and vise versa, including relevant knowledge and training needed to make an apt professional (Chettiparamb, 2006;Edwards & Bates, 2011;Kotval, 2003). There is no conclusive answer regarding the skills and knowledge planners must acquire during their training, nor established appropriate teaching methods to train a planner.…”