By Phillip Rollfing
As Texas becomes increasingly more urbanized, the need is greater than ever for more highly educated professionals in architecture and allied fields to assume new and often challenging planning roles and make wise decisions about factors ranging from land use to economic development to hazard and emergency planning.
Texas A&M has traditionally been a major source for expertise in these and related areas – through its faculty engaged in relevant research to a long line of Aggie graduates who have served in vital roles at the local, state and national levels. The College of Architecture has long been in the vanguard in fostering this expertise and is now offering a new broad-based undergraduate program, the Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Science degree offered by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning – the first undergraduate program of its kind in Texas.
Texas A&M aims, through this new program, to prepare graduates for entry-level positions in a variety of fields — especially those requiring analytical skills and critical thinking. The program offers a well-rounded education for advanced studies involving the analysis of economic, environmental, political, and social forces and the development of solutions that shape neighborhoods, communities, cities and entire regions.
According to LAUP department head Forster Ndubisi, the BS-URS “rounds out the department’s academic degree programs, taking advantage of the skills and expertise of its faculty while providing a broad-based, multidisciplinary education from which students can acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to create livable, sustainable and safe communities.”
Its broad-based, multidisciplinary curriculum differentiates it, from Texas’ only other undergraduate program in urban planning, Ndubisi says.
“While the [other] urban planning program focuses on professional skills and knowledge, our program emphasizes multidisciplinary theory, analytical methods and applied, real-world problem-solving,” explains Ndubisi.
This degree could serve as a springboard to graduate school, law school or the “non-artistic arenas” of urban planning, officials say. At its core, it is a training ground for jobs that will require doing research and making presentations.
While broad in scope, Texas A&M’s BS-URS program also allows students to specialize in one of six areas of study: hazard and emergency planning; housing, economic and urban development; health and human services planning and policy; land development; landscape and sustainable urbanism; and spatial analysis and planning.
These areas of specialization are very important, says Ndubisi, as they “build on the strengths of our faculty members while enhancing the overall complement of our department. They also provide a venue for our master and doctorate students to become more involved in our undergraduate programs.”
Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning’s other undergraduate program, the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, is a highly specialized studio-based program, which is rightly taught, Ndubisi notes, almost exclusively by landscape architects.
“The BLA program, like many of the degree offerings in the College of Architecture, focuses on design,” explains Ndubisi. “However, there are a number of students with an interest in the built environment and in building and planning sustainable communities, who are not particularly interested in a design-oriented program. Our new BS-URS program should appeal to those students.”
Approved last May by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the program is the department’s sixth degree offering and its second undergraduate degree option.
The department is planning to further develop the BS-URS offering, he adds, by seeking approval for a streamlined four-plus-one degree offering. If approved, this will allow motivated BS-URS students to continue directly to the Master of Urban Planning or Master of Science in Land Development professional degree programs, and complete their graduate studies a shortened amount of time.
