Likins says proposal to move school seen as 'promising'

With a newfound optimism surrounding the School of Planning's future, officials within the school and the department into which it may move say students would reap benefits from interdisciplinary courses and a broader faculty base.

New planning graduate students could even enroll as early as this fall if President Peter Likins follows a recommendation to spare the School of Planning by combining it with the geography and regional development department, said Barbara Becker, the school's director.

Likins, who has been out of town this week, wrote in an e-mail Wednesday that he hadn't seen the proposal to move the planning school. He wouldn't say whether he would support it, but characterized it as "promising."

The school's future remains uncertain, but now that the Faculty Senate voted 18-0 in a nonbinding vote on Monday in favor of moving rather than closing it, Likins and Provost George Davis have softened their language about the program's proposed elimination.

As recently as last month, Davis said it was "very unlikely" that the planning school would be saved, but when asked on Monday to gauge the likelihood of the school being saved, he simply said he wasn't very good at making predictions.

And now, officials in the School of Planning and the geography and regional development department are speaking excitedly about the potential for collaboration among the intellectual disciplines and even the creation of an undergraduate planning program.

"Preserving (planning) actually helps us maintain our programs," said John Paul Jones, head of the geography and regional development department.

Graduate students in the geography department could benefit from the

theoretical and practical courses offered in the planning curriculum, he said.

Planning offers courses in areas such as urban design, environmental policy and transportation. Some of its courses are already cross listed with the geography department, and faculty from both disciplines have emphasized the potential for even closer collaboration.

At least one planning faculty member is leaving the UA, but Jones said he thought closer collaboration between the two departments could help offset that loss because students would be able to take courses from faculty in both departments.

"I think students will ... see that they have some other courses that we haven't ever utilized in the past," Becker said.

Planning, which now offers only a master's degree, could one day offer a more extensive undergraduate curriculum, Becker said.

Likins and Davis had cited the planning school's lack of an undergraduate degree curriculum as a reason for proposing its elimination.

A planning major probably won't happen soon, Becker said, but she considers it a realistic possibility once more funding is in place and about four more planning faculty can be hired.

"Until we can get those funds, I can say that we probably won't do it," she said.

Money for those hires would have to come from outside sources, which could include fees for students enrolling in the program or its individual courses, income from community service project, which the school now performs at a cost, or an annual fund-raising event.

Becker also isn't worried about attracting students to a school that would have just survived an elimination scare. She said about 35 people have expressed interest in the program, though she acknowledges that probably half of them have enrolled in other programs.

"There are people who want to come here for that and what they know of the program, and the kind of students it can turn out will overshadow the history of the recent past," said Nancy Huber, who chaired the committee that proposed moving the school into the geography department.