Fellowship University of Utah

We are pleased to announce two exciting fellowship opportunities for incoming Ph.D. students in the Department of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah. Each fellowship provides three years of graduate support to students accepted into the Department’s Ph.D. program in Metropolitan Planning, Policy and Design.

The doctoral degree in Metropolitan Planning, Policy and Design at the University of Utah helps meet society’s need for researchers, scholars, teachers, and leaders to make our metropolitan areas sustainable, resilient and just. The planning challenge is to anticipate change and learn how best to manage it; the policy challenge is how to craft and implement policies needed to facilitate desired change; and the design challenge is how to shape the built environment to achieve desired outcomes.

This fellowship is open to incoming Ph.D. students interested in the integration of ecology and systems thinking with the processes of planning and design, social-ecological systems and resilience, and urban hydrology and urban nature. The fellow will work within the Center for Ecological Planning & Design (CEPD), an interdisciplinary hub for collaborative thinking and research at the nexus of the built and natural environments and human communities. CEPD faculty and students think broadly and connectively, while embedding research and practice in the particular geographic, cultural, and political context of the American West.

We invite Ph.D. applicants whose research interest is around planning processes in diverse populations across a range of scales from the neighborhood to the region, potentially addressing issues related to the Intermountain West and engaging local urban and rural communities. We especially desire applicants who want to collaborate with local indigenous communities through our College’s DesignBuildBluff program and/or with immigrants and Latin/x communities in the West Side of Salt Lake City through University Neighborhood Partners.

The University of Utah is situated in the “capital” of the evocative Intermountain West – the Great Salt Lake Valley. Combining the amenities of a major international city with the friendliness of a quaint, mountain town, Salt Lake is an ideal location for living, working and learning. A beautiful, safe, and vibrant destination, Salt Lake combines unparalleled access to natural recreation, a bustling economy, dynamic nightlife, remarkable history, warm hospitality, and Utah’s Greatest Snow on Earth. Nature hikes are as little as 10 minutes away and 11 national parks, five in Utah, are easily accessible for weekend trips. A surprise to many, Salt Lake is incredibly diverse, with significant populations of Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islanders. In 2015, a national survey found that Salt Lake City was home to the seventh largest population of LGBT-identifying people in the U.S.

Ph.D. applicants should discuss why their research focus aligns with the fellowship in the statement of interest. Questions about the Ph.D. program should be directed to Professor Divya Chandrasekhar, chandrasekhar@arch.utah.edu. Apply here by January 10.