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To highlight some of Project Cities star students and faculty, PC staff sat down to interview Hunter Hedelius, an undergraduate student in the School of Social Transformation. During the spring 2022 semester, Hunter worked on a project with City of Peoria as part of Greg Broberg’s JUS 301 Research Methods course. As a culmination of student projects in the last three years, students in Greg’s class set out to understand how Peoria residents get information from the City about events and community services. From this, students conducted a survey of Peoria residents to understand what information is being left out of communities in order to inform recommendations for Peoria to engage its residents. Hunter analyzed the survey data and synthesized the findings for the showcase presentation.

Check out the project final summary report | Community Engagement Strategies

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ASU's Full Circle, a publication focusing on news from the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, recently highlighted one of our star faculty members, Al Brown!

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To highlight some of Project Cities' star students and faculty, PC staff sat down to interview Gabby La Caria, an undergraduate student in the School of Social Transformation. With a double major in Justice Studies and Public Service and Public Policy, Gabby is focusing on law and policy, hoping to attend law school in the future. She is interested in racial and social justice and wants to pursue constitutional law since it affects everyday people.

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To highlight some of Project Cities' star students, PC staff sat down to interview Shrut Kirti Chawla, a recent master’s graduate from The Polytechnic School Environmental and Resource Management program! With a background in biotechnology, Shrut enrolled in the ERM program to pursue her passion for environmental health and safety. As a student, Shrut was the Vice President of the Environmental & Resource Management Club at ASU, as well as a Safety in the Built Environment office assistant.

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To highlight some of Project Cities star students and faculty, PC staff sat down to interview Jade Bravo. As part of the culminating experience for her Master’s of Public Policy, Jade worked with Peoria’s Water Services Director, Cape Powers, to research tiered water pricing as a water conservation strategy. 

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To highlight some of Project Cities' star students and faculty, PC staff sat down to interview Katy Hendricks. As a recent graduate with her Master of Public Administration, Katy recently accepted a position with a consulting firm, McKinsey & Company.

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This week we are excited to highlight one of our exceptional faculty members, Dr. Gregory Broberg! With an extensive background as an elementary and middle school teacher, Greg has cultivated a passion for educational equity, focusing on how to best support the unique needs of students. Before he was a teacher, he worked in various capacities in the juvenile court, including being a Court Appointed Special Advocate. Dr. Broberg is with the ASU School of Social Transformation as a Justice & Social Inquiry faculty member and Senior Lecturer.

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To highlight some of Project Cities star students and faculty, PC staff sat down to interview Hussain Farwa. Farwa has worked on two Project Cities projects, one with the City of Peoria and one with the Town of Clarkdale.

Farwa’s first project was the COVID needs assessment for local businesses for the City of Peoria. For this project she worked on a peer community analysis to learn more about what other cities were doing to support local businesses during COVID. For her second project, she worked with the Town of Clarkdale to identify a peer community, Camp Verde, to identify recommendations for affordable housing issues. The following dialogue and summary come from an interview with Farwa about her experience in the Project Cities program.

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We are pleased to highlight one of our star alumni, William Walker, a passionate sustainability undergraduate student. In Fall 2020, William worked with the Town of Clarkdale on the Sustainability park project in Nalini Chhetri’s Urban Sustainability Best Practices Application course. As part of this project, William worked on a small team to identify best practices for sustainability education and outdoor recreation for the Town’s 100-acre park, as well as strategies to develop sense of place through trails.

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We are excited to highlight Emily Hinkle, a proud Arizona State University and Project Cities alumni, who participated in multiple applied projects from 2019-2021, with the City of Glendale and the City of Peoria. Following graduation, Emily was also hired as a contractor by the SCN team, to conduct additional research and writing for the City of Peoria’s water conservation and drought contingency planning project.

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To highlight some of Project Cities star students and faculty, PC staff sat down to interview Lenessa Nelson, an ASU graduate with a Master in Sustainability Leadership. With Project Cities, she worked on the Sustainability Action Plan 3.0 for the City of Peoria. As part of this project, Lenessa focused on community engagement and worked on revisions of the plan. Lenessa switched focus for her graduate capstone project to working with the City of Peoria on collecting resident feedback and increasing resident awareness of the Sustainability Action Plan 3.0. Lenessa’s primary role was to distribute a survey to residents. With an initial goal of 300 responses, Peoria residents surpassed that with 780 responses! The following dialogue and summary come from an interview with Lenessa about her experience in the Project Cities program.

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We are pleased to highlight one of the network’s outstanding faculty members, Mr. Al Brown. Al is a Senior Lecturer and the Director of Environmental Research Initiatives at ASU’s Polytechnic campus. He is also Faculty with the Environmental Technology Management program. Al participated in the program’s inaugural partnership year, and has facilitated a total of 5 student projects with Project Cities, since 2017.

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Project Cities is excited to highlight two students who worked on sustainability planning for the City of Peoria, Emily Harding and Amber Bolling-Galuppo. As part of Candice Carr Kelman’s Policy and Governance in Sustainable Systems course, Emily and Amber were split into groups to for the Sustainability Plan Review project. Throughout the semester, Emily and Amber identified key benchmark cities and developed recommendations for Peoria’s upcoming SAP rewrite. For the Sustainability Action Plan (SAP) updates, Emily and Amber conducted research to identify and evaluate sustainability planning best practices for their respective topics. Emily worked on the transportation section of the plan, while Amber worked on water resources.

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To highlight some of Project Cities star students, we sat down to interview Kasi Darnell, an ASU graduate with a Master of Sustainability Leadership. With Project Cities, she worked on community engagement component as part of the sustainability action planning public outreach project for the City of Peoria. As part of this project, Kasi focused on community engagement collecting resident feedback for the Sustainability Action Plan 3.0. Kasi’s primary role focused on collecting public input, including community surveys and listening sessions, in addition to devising a dissemination strategy for the surveys. The following dialogue and summary come from an interview with Kasi about her experience in the Project Cities program.

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To highlight some of Project Cities’ star students, we interviewed Keith Morphus. Keith graduated from ASU in December 2020 with a Master’s in Urban and Environmental Planning. Keith has worked on three projects with Project Cities, covering various topics, including downtown revitalization and transit. With the Town of Clarkdale, Keith worked on the Downtown Revitalization Plan. With the City of Peoria, Keith worked on the P83 Urban Village Visioning project for his master’s culminating experience. The following dialogue and summary come from an interview with Keith about his experience in the Project Cities program.

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