The spring 2008 semester saw the debut of a new graduate-level Transportation Planning Certificate Program offered through the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, part of Texas A&M University’s College of Architecture.
The program is a collaborative effort among the College of Architecture’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, the Texas Transportation Institute, the Texas A&M Department of Civil Engineering and the Bush School of Government and Public Service.
“The program,” said Forster Ndubisi, head of the College of Architecture’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, “is intended to provide students with the interdisciplinary, substantive base of knowledge needed to be broadly successful in the transportation profession, as well as specialized instruction tailored to building student skills and capabilities in three critical areas: transportation systems planning, transportation and urban design, and transportation policy.”
Eric Dumbaugh, assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, will direct the certificate program.
“It started off with a discussion between myself, Forster Ndubisi and Melissa Tooley,” said Dumbaugh. Tooley is the director of the Texas Transportation Institute’s University Transportation Center for Mobility, part of the Texas A&M University System.
“We asked, how can we take a big-picture perspective on transportation and start filling needs that are in the professional community?” he said. “The idea for the certificate came out of those discussions. We wanted to build an interdisciplinary certificate that brings people together from different programs – landscape architecture, architecture, civic engineering, the Texas Transportation Institute and the Bush School.”
The program was begun with $162,000 in grants from the Texas Transportation Institute’s University Transportation Center for Mobility; Ndubisi is the principal investigator.
“The certificate offerings will expand Texas A&M’s transportation curriculum and enhance the university’s position as a national leader in transportation education,” said Ndubisi. “This program also provides the foundation for developing an executive certificate that will be accessible to professionals in selected urban locations in Texas.”
Students enrolled in the certificate program will take a comprehensive capstone course requiring them to address a real-world transportation problem. Students completing the Transportation Planning Certificate Program will graduate with both a broad understanding of the role of transportation in contemporary society as well as an interdisciplinary perspective on how to best address transportation-related problems.
