As students from the University of Nebraska (MCRP) master and regional planning program, we were both shocked and deeply concerned that our program on the list for the latest program excretions at our beloved university. Care not only for the program in which we have invested our time and hearts, but also for the state of Nebraska. The planning profession is one of the basics of modern government and economic development, from the village committees and County Commissions of the Great Plains to the Federal Departments of Washington, no public investments occur without a plan. The ability of our communities to meet their common dreams and necessary measures to cope with the challenges are formalized in the work of our chosen profession. In the classrooms of Arch Hall, we are preparing to face today's challenges and to lay the basics of a better morning. A morning that most of us in these countries we know as Nebraska hope to serve their people and to thrive good life.
With over half a century of history as a department and a rank in the top -tten of the peer programs in the academic analytics Scholarly Research Index, the strengths of our program give us hope for its space for growth. Last year the largest arrival cohort was in the recent history of the program, and against this background, many of us have our own stories about why we decide Nebraska. We get with a comprehensive variety of backgrounds (history, environmental science, journalism and public health, to name just a few) and under the variety of “non -traditional” students there is professional experience in parallel experts such as community development and education. In view of these perspectives of planning work, the relative isolation of planning to the College of Architecture has made many of us a little disappointed. A disappointment that fortunately we believed that we are pointing out an opportunity for a new vision for the program. A vision of the students for the future of MCRP that we started crowdsourcing last winter, but for obvious reasons we are now the moment to say it.
Our support for the future of the program is of great importance for us and should be for all Nebraskan. We are the only accredited planning program in Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana or the Dakotas. The termination of CRP would leave the plans for the future of the northern Great Plains to those who were trained outside of these countries. The existing planning agencies, privately and publicly, would lose their pipelines for home talents. What we as a student in the program, despite our different answers to “Why here?”, Consider our wish for a program with the current and foreseeable planning challenges that Nebraska faces. To achieve this, the large number of knowledge sentences and relationships that are crucial for the encounter must be convinced. We hope that this form will take on three “C 's curriculum, community and cooperation through a focus.
The pursuit of strategic partnerships within the university to rejuvenate the first “C” is the basis of its adaptability and appeals to students in the basic course. Fortunately, numerous programs at the university have superfluous overlaps in the planning work: landscape architecture, public order, environmental sciences, sociology, history, tree management, global studies and the rich experiences of interdisciplinary centers such as those of Great Plains studies. Our program offers a minor and certificate for students, and we have long -term partnerships with the Colleges of Law, Engineering and the Medical Center at the University of Nebraska via our Dual Masters programs. If we expand these certificates and double programs, we can expand the pipeline to the planning profession. For example, a double stream certificate with planning and public policy seems to us to be a clear gap in calculating the interests of the existing student. Apart from the promotion of study paths, which are divided into our connections to voting subjects outside of the College of Architecture, the program of the community and regional planning should create interdisciplinary seminars, studios and research projects together. Cross-Listed classes that examine the interrelations from the place, health and our legal systems would generate recruitment, storage and a greater production of loan lessons. In the context of Lincoln and Greater Nebraska, we develop core recognition of our profession as a connection between people, place and intentionality through our career in order to close the various technical disciplines with which we will work with the affected communities of the plans that we are devoted to. Cooperation with and not just “for” communities as a program begins to break open the institutional silos into which we have walled.
We know that the responsibility of building this program, including us, is also the students. We worked hard to cultivate the second “C” of a lively planning program, community. The Student Planning Association from Nebraska (Span), which felt stiff and pre -formative for many of us last autumn, has recorded increasing commitment and renewed programming. We focus on rooting ourselves in this place, a city that is proud to call home and bring the students out of our academic bladder. Span strives to promote a feeling of belonging and the purpose of those who come to the program from the state or international state students in Nebraska. Whether MCRP students apply for our program as a Nebraskan or not, we hope that they leave it as one. We build relationships with each other, planners and, in increasing cases, do not practice “urban” and local neighborhood groups. Groups that have put together our predecessors in the past decades of the program developed plans. From the attraction of the current limits of the close -up organization near South to the establishment of design eschars for the radial reuse of R/UDAT team in the 1980s, planning students left their grades in this city.
This third “C”, cooperation, is a legacy that we are proud and strive to continue. We would like to put together a basis for this program, which enables the joint creation of our academic experiences of the students, from the hiring of studio customers to the organization of programming discussions and debates on planning theories. In our many studio-based classes, we work with municipalities all over Nebraska. We work with large and small communities to develop comprehensive plans, economic development plans and revitalization plans in the city center. These plans create joint visions for places and their people. We succeeded in delivering state and federal resources to places in Nebraska that would otherwise not have the resources, especially in rural communities. We strive for an educational approach for the surrounding Lincoln community and believe that our program offers a strong combination of academic and professional specialist knowledge. We have benefited from an abundance of possibilities to actively develop the cooperation of our department with other Nebraskaners. The unique mix of experiences both in
Our program is made official decisions, the roles and the wider network of Community Builders, our program is outside of the same age in the middle west.
We have to invest in our heads and hearts that are proud to name this place at home. Regardless of whether we grew up here and decided or have made the choice to come here – whether we grew up in the Valley record or were raised in Eppley a week before our first class, we know these levels as home. Without the work of the planner produced by Nebraska, a urban motorway intended by Saint Louis would carve through our capital, a stream that runs next to our campus would still be locked up underground, and countless parts of the historical architecture of our city would be buried on our landfills. On building what makes Lincoln and Nebraska something special and plan the basics for a better morning – and who else will do it as a planner?
Do you want to help? Please follow this link and use the instructions to write a letter in which you have expressed your support, or send your comments directly with this portal, which is open on September 15th to October 13th.