Dr. Aujean Lee, a new faculty member in City and Metropolitan Planning, was recently featured in Humans at the U! As part of the article, Dr. Lee says:

“City and Metropolitan Planning (CMP) was looking for somebody who does research related to diverse populations and community engagement. That is a key part of my research and teaching and is why I am in higher education to begin with.

I was drawn to the City and Metropolitan Planning department because of their classes. Planning programs have studios where students do hands-on semester-long projects. I have experience linking students with nonprofits. So when I saw that the CMP department was working with University Neighborhood Partners and that there was a consistent class on the Westside, I was excited. It’s so important to me that this kind of class is being offered every year because when you do community engagement work, it can’t just be dropping in and leaving. Those types of projects are worse because they can lead to broken promises. Seeing this long-term commitment to the Westside neighborhood communicated to me that the U’s CMP department was different from other programs I’ve seen.”