The Urban Planning graduate program at Ball State surpassed its scores from the last ranking in 2011 in this year’s Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs by Planetizen, an information network for the urban planning, design and development community.
This year, the department was ranked eighth in the Midwest, seventh nationally among programs not offering a Ph.D. and seventh in top small programs.
The rankings were published in their fourth edition of the Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs.
James Brasuell, the managing editor of Planetizen, said to come up with the rankings, they use survey mechanisms, as well as some of their own research.
They did a survey of faculty around the country and asked their opinions on metrics about the quality of the programs.
Planetizen also used data that was publicly available about schools – like scores, retention rates and tuition costs.
“We tried to capture accurate data that reflected all the things students might consider when looking at graduate schools for planning,” Brasuell said. “Obviously, Ball State performed well on some or all of these metrics. Ranking out of so many schools in any of those, within region and nationally is a huge accomplishment by faculty and students of that school. It really reflects that they’re doing a lot of things well.”
Michael Burayidi, professor and chairperson of the department of urban planning, said the department was “hyped and excited” about the rankings.
He said he thought some of the changes that had been made to the department brought about the higher ranking.
About a year ago, the urban planning program underwent a reaccreditation of the program and it brought in faculty to review the program and curriculum.
Burayidi said the faculty was impressed with the curriculum, which was revised to be closely aligned with Planetizen.
One of the main changes was a requirement for students to take a class on geographic information systems, since that is a still required in almost all urban planning jobs.
“With this, it makes a more easier ease into the work place and allows students to do well in the planning practice,” Burayidi said.
Burayidi said they have also decreased the turnover within the department over the past five years, as well as increasing the faculty population.
“We have been able to hire and retain high quality faculty,” Burayidi said. “That’s very important in delivering curriculum.”
The department also has opportunities to travel to planning conferences, which is another thing that Burayidi said most likely contributed to their ranking. He said they take more than 30 students to the professional planning conference every year and provide financial support for it.
This allows them to showcase some of their work and have a chance to expose it to professionals.
“It’s not enough to simply do good work,” Burayidi said. “If people don’t know what you’re doing, they wont recognize it.”
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