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Urban studies and planning gives awards

The Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) has recognized a number of students, faculty, staff and alumni/ae with awards at year's end.

Graduate students Laurie Goldman and Brent Ryan, both of Brooklyn, NY, received awards for Outstanding Contribution to the Intellectual Life of the Department. Departmental Service Awards went to graduate students Carolyn Lee of San Leandro, CA; LaTonya Green of Berkeley, CA; and T. Luke Young of Stillwater, NY. Jeffrey W. Rapson, a graduate student from Maitland, FL, won the Wallace Floyd Award for City Design and Development.

Michelle Apigian, a graduate student in both city planning and architecture from San Francisco, received the Department of Architecture's Alpha Rho Chi Medal for service, leadership and promise of professional merit. Awards for Outstanding Master of City Planning Thesis went to graduate students Richard Cho of Edison, NY and Benjamin Schonberger of Portland, OR. Katrina Simon of Stone Mountain, GA received the Carroll Wilson Award.

Graduate student Dulcy Anderson of Oswego, IL won the Flora Crockett Stephenson Award for her paper, "'The Greatest Change That Ever Happens is When People Change Their Minds' -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland and the Utopian City Plan." The Ida M. Green Fellowship, given to a female senior, went to Jonna Anderson of Vancouver, WA.

Assistant Professor Eran Ben-Joseph received the MIT Wade Award. Administrative assistant Kathy Larson received an award for Outstanding Professional Service by Support Staff.

AWARDS FROM OUTSIDE MIT

Several people associated with DUSP also received awards from outside MIT. The Society for American City and Regional Planning History gave its John Reps Prize for Best Dissertation to graduate student Thomas J. Campanella of Brooklyn, NY for his dissertation titled "Republic of Shade: The Emergence of the American Elm as a Cultural and Urban Design Element in 19th-Century New England."

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) named Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer Lisa R. Peattie as Outstanding Planning Educator, and Professor Karen R. Polenske received the organization's Margarita McCoy Award for Outstanding Service to Women Faculty. Sumila Gulyani, a graduate student from New Delhi, India, won ACSP's Barclay Jones Award for Best Dissertation of the Year. Administrator officer Rolf Englerreceived the ACSP Presidential Service Award.

The American Planning Association's Massachusetts chapter gave honorable mention in its Outstanding Planning Award student project category for 1999 to a team comprising Adjunct Associate Professor Terry Szold and 1999 master's degree recipients Eryn Deeming, Kristen Harol, Adair Smith, John Soininen and Margaret Super. The American Institute of Certified Planners bestowed its Outstanding Student Award on Josh Sevin, a graduate student from Wynnewood, PA.

Administrative assistant Marjorie Noack received the Distinguished District Award from Toastmasters International. Associate Professor Lawrence J. Vale, associate department head, was named the 1999 Place Research Award Winner in the EDRA/Places Awards competition for "Three Public Neighborhoods: Assessing Public Housing Redevelopment."

RESEARCH AWARDS

A number of graduate students won research fellowships and scholarships. The MIT Martin Society of Graduate Fellows for Sustainability awarded a Martin Fellowship and Scholarship to Ali Shirvani-Mahdavi of Trabuco Canyon, CA. Farzana S. Mohamed, a senior from Nairobi, Kenya, received an Aga Khan Foundation International Scholarship/Fellowship. Meghan Horl of San Francisco received a Provost's Fellowship for Women and Minorities.Anthony Townsend of Brooklyn, NY received a School of Architecture and Planning Harold Horowitz (1951) Student Research Fund Award.

The American Planning Association awarded a Private Practice Division Scholarship to Benjamin Schonberger of Portland, OR, and the 1999-2000 Charles Abrams Scholarship Award to La Tonya Green. Daniel Serda of Kansas City, KS received a Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Dissertation Fellowship. A HUD Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant went to Jennifer Johnson of State College, PA. Madhu Malini Raghunath of India received an American Association of University Women International Fellowship. Sylvia Dohnert of Caracas, Venezuela won an award from the National Council for Technology and Science Research in Venezuela.

Jason Corburn of New York, NY received an Environmental Leadership Program Fellowship for 2000-03 and also a 2000-01 dissertation fellowship from the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation. Lou Baker of Espanola, NM received a 1999-2000 award from the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. Eric Cahill of San Diego was awarded a Hugh Hampton Young Leadership Fellowship. Inter-American Foundation Doctoral Field Research Fellowships went to Raquel S. Gomes of Potomac, MD; Nichola J. Lowe of Davis, CA; and Rodrigo Serrano of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Santiago Garcia-Moreno of Mexico City received a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholarship and a MacArthur-Ford-Hewlett Graduate Fellowship. Ciro Biderman of S�o Paulo, Brazil received a Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Dissertation Fellowship and was also named a DUSP Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) Fellow.

Graduate students Ambika Prokop of Sunnyvale, CA and Anyeley Dzegede of Deerfield Beach, FL received Summer Student Program awards from the consulting firm EDAW. Vinit Mukhija of Haryana, India and Jennifer Johnson won Fannie Mae Foundation Student Travel Awards.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 31, 2000.

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