About the Land-Use Planning, Management, and Design Doctoral Program
Program Coordinator: Dr. Eric Bernard, Professor and Chairperson, Landscape Architecture
The interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Land-Use Planning, Management, and Design (LPMD) focuses on various aspects of land and land use. It trains students to be leaders in their community, firms, and organizations with enhanced understanding of multidisciplinary endeavors, improved communication skills between compartmentalized systems of knowledge, and the ability to bring knowledge from one discipline to focus on problems and ongoing projects in another. LPMD training prepares students to be leaders in administrative, legislative, academic, research, design firms, or organizations that deal with land use.
This program is administered by the Graduate School with an interdisciplinary steering committee. Faculty and courses are drawn from participating units across the university. Studies of the complex factors influencing human use of resources, training in the research and evaluative methods that can be applied to interdisciplinary studies, and education in the institutional structures that shape policy and action are included in the program.
Students with an interest in issues of resiliency including environmental/natural resource management and planning, community planning and design, public policy administration, and historic preservation are encouraged to work together to take on global challenges involving land use.
Students admitted to the LPMD program are expected to bring a set of knowledge and skills from their background departments. They will be exposed to various courses in contributing disciplines and, with the assistance of their advisor and/or committee, will be expected to demark an intersection that will be the focus of the dissertation. All students are required to complete a minimum of 66 hours beyond the bachelor’s degree plus a minimum of 12 (8000-level) hours of dissertation. This includes specified 24 hours of multidisciplinary core courses, 21 hours of track courses, 15 hours of supporting courses and 6 hours of tool courses. Students will need to specify one track in which 21 hours of courses are selected, of which only 4 courses in one discipline can be taken. Track courses, research projects, and the student’s dissertation will focus on the track selected and will be chosen by the student and approved by the advisor.
Because students come from a variety of backgrounds with different interests and career goals, one standard course of study is not required. Students craft a degree plan with their advisory committee drawn from three or more departments and two or more colleges. This committee arranges a student’s course of study and specialization. The student then follows this “custom-designed” program of study, while the advisory committee is responsible for administering comprehensive exams and for directing both the dissertation and the student’s program.
Requirements considered for admission to the program include GRE, grade point average, statement of research interests and goals, writing samples/portfolio, and letters of recommendation on official letterheads. International applicants must submit TOEFL or IELTS score.
