URP GRADUATE SPOTLIGHT
Fall 2022
December 14, 2022
This Saturday, a total of 17 students will graduate from the Urban and Regional Planning Department. These students have a wide range of backgrounds and planning and career interests.
The URP Department is proud to have had the privilege of joining these students on their academic planning journey and is excited to watch their success. Read more about our graduates below:
Emilee Aguerreberre
MURP On Campus
Emilee’s planning interests include resilience, climate adaptation, parks and recreation, placemaking, and historic preservation. Her future goals include working with a multidisciplinary team that is dedicated to advancing social equity and responding to environmental stressors impacting coastal communities.
Benjamin Bennett
MURP On Campus
Benjamin’s background is in economic and community supportive development, food systems, historically disadvantaged communities, long range planning, and small and rural town planning. After graduation, he plans to gain certifications in AICP, Economic Development Finance Professional (EDFP), and Economic Gardening (EG). In the interim, Benjamin intends to pursue projects that achieve collective benefits through Community Supportive Economic Development (CSED) by tethering local communities, networks, and systems to opportunities that produce sustainable, positive net gain outcomes.
Jamie Bufkin
MURP On Campus
Jamie is interested in transportation planning, urban design, and smart growth. Jamie lives and works in Washington DC as a regional transportation planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG). In this position, she helps local governments decrease personal automobile trips.
Sophia Corugedo
MURP On Campus
Sophia’s planning background is centered in gentrification, community planning, community land trusts, land use law, and policy. She will begin working as the Research Manager for the Grounded Solutions Network, where she will lead projects that track the data around shared equity homeownership across the country. Sophia believes that this work both highlight and discover potential benefits of shared equity homeownership while also sharing best practices and working with partner organizations to support their efforts.
Alex Eide
MURP On Campus
Alex is interested in transportation planning, Geographic Information Software (GIS), and urban design. He is actively seeking employment in transportation planning and GIS. Alex wants to make our cities and transportation systems more dynamic and better accommodating for pedestrians and bicyclists. He also wants to increase the use of green space and tree canopy to make urban areas more sustainable.
Tess Flemma
On Campus 4+1
Tess is interested in environmental planning and design. Her thesis investigated the impacts and best practices of solar policy in Florida. She is actively seeking employment and hopes to move to the Washington D.C. area.
Erin Fowler
MURP On Campus
Erin’s academic studies were centered around housing, equity planning, and urban resilience. She currently works as a Senior Manager at the Urban Land Institute (ULI) on their Building Healthy Places initiative in Washington, DC. At ULI, she conducts research, generates reports, and conducts technical assistance on a wide range of issues, ranging from how to integrate racial equity into real estate development practice and how to decarbonize the built environment to park and policy redesign.
Jeremy Griffith
MURP On Campus
Jeremy is interested in housing policy, community development, data and performance analytics in planning, and transportation planning. He is moving to Atlanta to seek employment in the community development and affordable housing spheres of the Atlanta area.
Tate Johnson
MURP On Campus
Tate focused her MURP studies in affordable housing, accessibility, multimodal opportunities, and transportation planning. She will begin working as a transportation planning analyst for Kimley-Horn in their Fort Lauderdale, Florida office.
Laura Martinez
MURP On Campus
Laura’s primary interest is in transportation & suburban retrofitting. She currently works for Stantec as an Urban Planner. Most of Laura’s previous work is in land entitlements in the Southwest Florida region. However, she is also working on completing Streetlight Data training, which will provide her the opportunity to work on tech-advanced micro-mobility projects in the U.S. and England in the future.
Christopher Masar
MURP Online
Christopher focused his studies and capstone research in land-use, environmental management, and disaster planning. After graduation Christopher plans on spending more time with his fiancé and puppy, becoming AICP certified, and advancing his planning career. He also looks forward to planning his wedding which will take place next August.
Pamela Pineros
MURP Online
Pamela is deeply interested in planning for affordable housing. She recently began working with the Fairfax County, Virginia Planning Department and hopes to learn more about different aspects of planning through different positions within the department. Her future plans include sitting for the AICP exam during the next cycle.
Catherine Stout
MURP On Campus
Catherine’s planning interests are rooted in sustainability and historic preservation. She will spend time traveling after graduation before figuring out her future plans.
Jacob Stout
MURP On Campus
Jacob is interested in land use law, urban design, economic development, and small and rural town planning. He plans to work in the public sector to gain more knowledge of the obstacles that local governments in Florida face and hopes to one day help small towns that lack strong planning capacity.