Justice Castañeda, a PhD student in the Urban and Regional Planning Program, was recently featured in the article Justice Castañeda Leads CommonWealth into a Citywide Era on the website Capital City Hues. Castañeda recently moved back to Madison after being gone for 18 years, and took a position as the Executive Director of a Community Development Organization. Capital City Hues interviewed Castañeda about how he acquired his new position by delving into his childhood in Madison, his time with the Marine Corps, earning an undergraduate degree from UC-San Diego, and his research for this master’s thesis. He began to look at the problems that young African Americans experience not as a personal responsibility issue, but more as a public health issue. When he saw the work that the public health workers were doing, he believed that the approach for was lot of the problems was incorrect. Through a fellowship at the Medical Center at UC-San Francisco, he was able to look at toxic stress and the role that this stress plays in both immune systems and in cognitive development of children. To read more about Castañeda in this inspiring article, click on the links for Part 1 and for Part 2. Justice Castañeda was also featured in the Wisconsin State Journal on May 26, 2017. You can read this inspirational article at the Wisconsin State Journal. Justice has also been featured in a Q&A article on The Cap Times website. You can read this here at http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/q-a-justice-casta-eda-brings-a-unique-life-story/article_c4be73c7-2b00-5afb-9655-fc30cb096a44.html.
The Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture is very proud of what all of our students are able to accomplish!