The hallmark of Auburn University's Master of Community Planning (MCP) program is the opportunity for students to engage with communities throughout Alabama and the Southeast in multiple classes. As part of the Alabama City Year Program, the MCP program students and faculty partner with local communities and work on projects to provide hands-on student learning experiences, in classes such as urban economics, urban design, sustainable transportation planning, historic preservation planning, and the synthesis (capstone) studio. Students learn to help diverse communities create and implement plans that improve and protect their quality-of-life, culture, resource base, built environment, natural environment, and economic vitality.
Students gain a deep and broad understanding of the issues in a city, while providing the city with invaluable information and ideas. Through numerous site visits and field trips with city planners, mayors, community groups and the public, students also gain extensive and valuable insight about planning practice. They present their work in professional forums such as city council meetings, planning commission meetings, to community groups, or through public participation processes.
This also allows students to develop a comprehensive portfolio of work that helps them showcase their expertise to future employers, and it puts students in contact with future employers. It allows the program to provide students with real-world experiences and prepares them to enter the planning profession with the tools that they need to solve community problems.
Alabama communities that the MCP program has partnered with in recent years include Phenix City, Montgomery, Dothan, Pell City, Mobile, Prattville, Tuskegee, Auburn-Opelika, and others. Several of these student projects can be viewed in the Alabama City Year Program ePortfolio.
If you are a community interested in partnering with the MCP program, please contact the MCP Program Director.