Planning Programs Using Social Media: A Useful Window for Prospective Students

As readers of this blog will know I encourage people to find
out about planning programs in multiple ways. Reading the work of faculty is a
crucial first step as is reading the program's web site. Visiting open houses
or connecting with students (programs often set up some kind of chat space
around admission time) are also options. Increasingly schools are using multiple
forms of social media to reach current students and alums providing a useful
window onto the programs for prospective students. This list highlights a few
of these sources used specifically by planning programs. There are many more of course, and
Jennifer Evans-Cowley has noted this in an interesting presentation as this
year's planning administrator's conference: http://www.slideshare.net/cowley11/acsp-administrators-social-media-21611:

• MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning's
  Alumni-Student group uses a public Facebook page to provide announcements,
  student profiles, and reports of events: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MIT-DUSP-Community/76181914232?sk=app_23798139265
  and it also has a blog at http://duspmeetup.wordpress.com/.

• Cornell's Department of City and Regional Planning (where I
  work) uses its blog to announce and report on events: http://cornellplanning.blogspot.com/.
  It also provides resource lists-on topics like diversity or support groups on
  campus. Fairly richly illustrated, it gives a sense of weekly activities on the
  department. Cornell CRP's facebook page is more specifically focused on alums
  but is also interesting: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cornell-CRP-Alumni/198498036836379.

• The Ohio State University has produced some excellent online
  videos promoting planning and their program. "Be a Plannner" on the front page
  of their program site is very good http://knowlton.osu.edu/planning
  (or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynqbEumyqYQ&noredirect=1)
  but an earlier video in black and white, and now unavailable, blew me away and
  made me want to rush to Columbus to study planning!

• Berkeley is an example of a program where social media seems
  to be organized at the college level. In the right menu of their main page at http://dcrp.ced.berkeley.edu/ one can
  click on icons for the college's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr
  accounts. While these sources have a lot of material from other departments,
  the YouTube section has a number of interesting videos from planning.

As I prepared this it occurred to me that it would be useful
to have a master list of such social media. Perhaps Planetizen can provide it
in their next guide to graduate education.

This is my September
blog, rather late due to travel.