School of City and Regional Planning Chair Bruce Stiftel keeps a busy schedule. On top of vising planning programs around the world with his work in the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), he leads a research-driven faculty and top-5 Planetizen program.

So it was a source of pride – and little surprise – when Stiftel’s colleagues learned he won the Martin Meyerson Award for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education.

Presented by the ACSP, the academic consortium that promotes planning education, research, service and outreach, this award is the pinnacle in higher education leadership. Stiftel is thus recognized as an urban and regional planning scholar and educator whose contribution in academic administration has influenced higher education nationally and even internationally.

“We’re very proud of Bruce for being the first Georgia Tech faculty to receive the Distinguished Educator Award. This is the highest honor of our academy,” said Nancey Green-Leigh, the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Architecture.

“Along with chairing planning schools at two universities, Bruce has been President of ACSP, the editor of the academy’s journal, a Board Member of our accrediting body and active in promoting partnerships in global planning education.”

Leading doctoral studies in planning
Planning education is “an awfully exciting, rewarding, fun thing to do,” Stiftel said.

Stiftel started his academic career in typical, idealistic planner fashion: “I wound up going off to college to try to do something to help fix the Earth,” he said. A graduate degree in city planning was the best way he could think of to translate his education into a work life.

After a planning master’s degree and air quality work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he returned to doctoral studies on citizen participation under the Clean Water Act funded by the North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute.

It turns out Stiftel’s academic journey mirrored a larger trend in planning education: The increasing importance of social sciences in planning programs and research-driven industry resulted in more faculty earning Ph. Ds, said Michael Elliott, a School of City and Regional Planning associate professor.

As the first chair of the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech, Stiftel was instrumental in establishing the Ph. D in City and Regional Planning as a standalone degree in 2010. That year Georgia Tech hosted the ACSP’s Ph. D workshop. The annual event is Stiftel’s brainchild and an opportunity for doctoral students to meet, discuss their dissertations and get career guidance.

“I think it has had a significant effect among college students, building networks and helping improve dissertations across the country,” he said.

Thinking globally about planning
“Bruce is credited with stabilizing the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP)…in a collaborative focused way contributing to the academic policies and standards of our program and the profession,” said Catherine Ross, the Harry West Professor of the School of City and Regional Planning and the Director of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development.

“His efforts were largely responsible for the development of international networking relationships with other associations of similar nature from across the globe,” she said.

As president of the ACSP, Stiftel developed the Ph. D workshop and helped organize a World Planning Schools Congress, which was hosted at Tongji University (China) in 2001.

“This was really the result of a process that began 15 years earlier,” Stiftel said, “but I stepped in and expanded the network to ten associations and got us to agree to work together on a regular basis.”

“Planning is done in specific places and national planning systems can differ quite substantially. But planning education and planning scholarship needs to draw on lessons from other places,” he said. “This network has helped us do it better.”

In 2003 he was the first headmaster of the ACSP “New Chairs School,” which is now a staple of the ACSP conference.

Most recently he represents the Global Planning Education Association Network at the UN Habitat, helping connect UN Habitat to academic associations.

Meeting a higher standard
Stiftel achieved a lasting impact on accreditation standards for planning schools during six years on the Planning Accreditation Board. He was part of a major overhaul of the discipline’s accreditation standards in 2012. The new accreditations challenge planning schools to be more forward-thinking and outcome-oriented, explained Elliott.

“Planning education has a lot of challenges in the 21st century University,” Stiftel said. “We typically have small class sizes but we do a lot of work out in the community that is often costly. So telling our story and getting universities to recognize our accomplishments and support them at the level we need is a challenge.”

That challenge is one Martin Meyerson, the namesake of Stiftel’s award, embodied.

“Martin Myerson is someone whose work I read as early as my first semester in planning school,” he said. As president of SUNY Buffalo and the University of Pennsylvania, Meyerson was an impactful figure in higher education as well as in planning theory and practice, Stiftel said.

“To be associated with his legacy in a small way is very humbling and very honoring.”