Urban, Regional Planning Program Gaining Momentum
This article describes the creation of the urban and regional planning program. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.
Citation for this article is: "Urban, Regional Planning Program Gaining Momentum," The Daily Reflector, March 5, 1964.
A fledgling program of instruction in urban and regional planning at East Carolina College has taken hold and is attracting wide interest from those who want more emphasis on training professionals to fill various planning jobs.
The program has been added to the course of study offered in the department of geography. The eight geography majors now working through the planning curriculum will, upon successful completion of the course, be ready for jobs as planners for cities, counties, states, the federal government, industries or independent planning firms.
According to the geography department's director, Dr. Robert E. Cramer, the planning program was added here as an answer to requests from many communities in the state for trained personnel in the specialized field of planning.
Cramer explains the role of the planning curriculum at East Carolina like this:
"Complex problems that need knowledge of planning are growing as the populations shifts from rural areas to the cities. Experience has taught urban specialists that planning for the future is imperative to avoid costly mistakes as the cities grow, and help undo the many mistakes already made.
"Regional planning, a relatively new field, involves much larger areas, such as river basins, or many counties linked together by common characteristics. For example, the Geography Department at East Carolina is conducting research now toward a regional plan for the Coastal Plain of North Carolina."
The new curriculum at East Carolina gives students who go after the planning minor an "adequate preparation for a position with a planning or development agency, or it prepares him for graduate study which could lead to a master's or the doctorate in planning," Cramer says.
The sequence of study is open to students at EC majoring in sociology, political science, or geography. It includes carefully related courses from several departments. They graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in geography, sociology, or political science with a minor in planning.
Before the planning minor was actually instituted last fall, the college had offered a limited number of planning courses for about five years. No less than 15 EC graduates who went through the limited planning curriculum have landed jobs, mainly in North Carolina and Virginia, with starting salaries of $6,000 a year not uncommon.
Supervising the new program is an assistant professor of geography, Richard A. Stephenson, an experienced professional planner who has worked in Ohio and Tennessee.
Stephenson, like Cramer, sees no important role for the planning curriculum at East Carolina. "Though the course of study as a program is really in its first year," he says, "it already has produced evidence that it is answering a definite need in North Carolina." Evidence is the EC graduates who hold planning jobs now.
Cramer adds this bit of evidence: "Almost every year there are about twice as many job offers listed for urban and regional planners as there are planning graduates. And the salaries of planners range from about $5,000 to more than $20,000 a year."
The program was not established here overnight. Cramer and Stephenson wrote many letters, had conferences with curriculum consultants, and in general opened the door for suggestions based on experience.
Not the least encouraging was North Carolina's Department of Conservation and Development. The former administrator of C & D's Division of Community Planning, Robert D. Barbour, worked with Cramer in attempts to align the program.
Acknowledging a "critical shortage of trained planning personnel" in and out of North Carolina, Barbour predicted "a growing need for individuals who have a good undergraduate training in planning."
"The program," Barbour told Cramer, "would be particularly beneficial to Eastern North Carolina"
He added, "It is obvious that if we are going to make qualified individuals available to communities of the East we must train more people in planning from that section of the state."
That is what the East Carolina program is geared to do.
