Planning Programs Using Social Media: A Useful Window for Prospective Students

As readers of this blog will know I encourage people to find out about planning programs in multiple ways. Reading the work of faculty is a crucial first step as is reading the program’s web site. Visiting open houses or connecting with students (programs often set up some kind of chat space around admission time) are also options. Increasingly schools are using multiple forms of social media to reach current students and alums providing a useful window onto the programs for prospective students. This list highlights a few of these sources used specifically by planning programs.

2 minute read

October 22, 2011, 9:17 AM PDT

By Ann Forsyth

As readers of this blog will know I encourage people to find
out about planning programs in multiple ways. Reading the work of faculty is a
crucial first step as is reading the program's web site. Visiting open houses
or connecting with students (programs often set up some kind of chat space
around admission time) are also options. Increasingly schools are using multiple
forms of social media to reach current students and alums providing a useful
window onto the programs for prospective students. This list highlights a few
of these sources used specifically by planning programs. There are many more of course, and
Jennifer Evans-Cowley has noted this in an interesting presentation as this
year's planning administrator's conference: http://www.slideshare.net/cowley11/acsp-administrators-social-media-21611:

MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning's
Alumni-Student group uses a public Facebook page to provide announcements,
student profiles, and reports of events: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MIT-DUSP-Community/76181914232?sk=app_23798139265
and it also has a blog at http://duspmeetup.wordpress.com/.

Cornell's Department of City and Regional Planning (where I
work) uses its blog to announce and report on events: http://cornellplanning.blogspot.com/.
It also provides resource lists-on topics like diversity or support groups on
campus. Fairly richly illustrated, it gives a sense of weekly activities on the
department. Cornell CRP's facebook page is more specifically focused on alums
but is also interesting: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cornell-CRP-Alumni/198498036836379.

The Ohio State University has produced some excellent online
videos promoting planning and their program. "Be a Plannner" on the front page
of their program site is very good http://knowlton.osu.edu/planning
(or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynqbEumyqYQ&noredirect=1)
but an earlier video in black and white, and now unavailable, blew me away and
made me want to rush to Columbus to study planning!

Berkeley is an example of a program where social media seems
to be organized at the college level. In the right menu of their main page at http://dcrp.ced.berkeley.edu/ one can
click on icons for the college's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr
accounts. While these sources have a lot of material from other departments,
the YouTube section has a number of interesting videos from planning.

As I prepared this it occurred to me that it would be useful
to have a master list of such social media. Perhaps Planetizen can provide it
in their next guide to graduate education.

This is my September
blog, rather late due to travel.

Social Media

Ann Forsyth

Trained in planning and architecture, Ann Forsyth is a professor of urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. From 2007-2012 she was a professor of city and regional planning at Cornell. She taught previously at at the University of Minnesota, directing the Metropolitan Design Center (2002-2007), Harvard (1999-2002), and the University of Massachusetts (1993-1999) where she was co-director of a small community design center, the Urban Places Project. She has held short-term positions at Columbia, Macquarie, and Sydney Universities.

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban and Environmental Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban and Environmental Planner

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