Public Information

The Planning Accreditation Board requires this information to be posted for the BS in Community & Regional Planning program.

Student Achievement

The Community & Regional Planning program at the Department of Geography, Planning, and Environment, East Carolina University, is designed to prepare professional planners for both the public and the private sectors, primarily serving the Mid-Atlantic and southeastern regions of the United States as well as other national and international communities.

Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes, 2022-2023

Development and Impact of Human Settlements: Students will demonstrate their knowledge of the development and impact of human settlements as it relates to planning.

• Means of Assessments: PLAN 4099: Exit Exam with embedded questions regarding the development and impact of human settlements (2009; Revised 2/7/14)
• The Criterion for Success: 80% or more of the students will answer correctly 75% or more of the questions regarding development and impact of human settlements (revised 12/9/11).
• Result Status: Criterion Met
  • Actions take, results & analysis of results:
    • Actions taken:
      • The Community and Regional Planning program offered a Summer Study Abroad program, Sustainable Urbanism in South Korea, in the summer 2022 (and will be offered again in the summer of 2023). Two major topics of this program were “environment and transportation innovations for sustainable urban environments.” Students visited research centers, the city government, and project sites to learn about innovative approaches in the highly dense urban area of Seoul.
        PLAN4025: Housing and Neighborhood Planning class conducted a class-wide project, Deferred Maintenance of Housing, Town of Bethel, NC, in Spring 2023 (client-based community engagement project). Students visited homes, measured the poor living conditions of rural homes, and interviewed the marginalized rural residents. Students witnessed the need for action in the rural ENC region from the project.
    • Result Status: Criterion met.83.3% of students (ten out of twelve students) who took the exit exam scored 75% or more on this outcome; thus, the criterion 80% was met.
    • Analysis of results: A faculty who taught higher-level planning courses in the environmental focus retired. Since then, we could only offer introductory environmental courses. Students only completed the questions that covered the introductory courses they took.
  • Actions Planned Based on Analysis of Results:
    • The BS Community and Regional Planning program has had limited “environmental” courses offered for several years due to the lack of faculty in the subject. We hired a new faculty last year, but he taught the graduate courses in the 2022-2023 academic year. We will carefully adjust the class schedules to cover the students’ needs for both BS and MS degrees.
    • PLAN4305: Ecological Landscape Planning class will be taught again in almost 10 years. The instructor received a Teaching Grant to develop the land use scenarios that students will exercise to review and compare comprehensively. Scenario planning is a process to support decision-making that helps urban and rural planners navigate the uncertainty of the future in the short and long term. Through these new and powerful tools, students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of development and its impacts on the environment much more effectively.

For the full 2022-2023 report made to the ECU Institutional Planning, Assessment, and Research (IPAR), click BS Assessment Report 2022-2023.