Student Clubs
Community Development Student Group
The Community Development Student Group is a group of students, supported by PSU Faculty, that develops relationships between future community builders as we seek to serve the University and the community in productive and fun ways. Many of us are majoring in Community Development as undergraduates in the School of Urban Studies and Planning at PSU but we also have students with other majors who are interested in strong communities, citizen participation and positive activism.
This student group is open to any student, but is mainly composed of Community Development majors and people interested in social justice, alternative economics, urban studies and planning, community health, community education and awareness, participatory decision making/democracy, and facilitation.
Planning Student Club
The Planning Club is a student-run organization with in the Master's of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program that encourages and facilitates communication between current PSU students, MURP faculty and staff, MURP alumni and the community at large. We strive to create a forum for discourse on current planning and academic issues, and professional opportunities.
Planning Includes Equity (PIE)
Planning Includes Equity (PIE) is a student-initiated organization, which catalyzes conversation and action to promote equal access to resources and opportunities as the foundation for strong communities. Initiated by graduate planning students who wanted to supplement their formal education by learning more about the historical and current relationship between urban planning and social equity, PIE is a thriving organization that has already began to shape PSU's graduate planning program.
Some of our programmatic initiatives include:
- Developing reading and conference on equity-related planning issues lead by Professor Sy Adler. This is part of a longer-term effort to educate ourselves about ways to apply a triple bottom line (equity, the environment, and economics) in our future endeavors as planning practioners.
- Instituting a bi-weekly brown bag series focused on equity issue pertinent to the planning field. Last years speakers included Commissioner Eric Sten and the founders of the Oregon Land Use Stories Project.
- Advocating for a greater focus on diversity in the program admissions process. We believe it is important for the PSU MURP program to activity recruit a planning class that reflects the urban communities planners often serve. Many of PIE's advocacy efforts over the past year have been focused around this issue.
In the future, PIE members hope to focus on our efforts of building relationships with the larger Portland community. We are considering offering free planning services to community groups such as neighborhood-based asset mapping or community meeting facilitation. Please contact equity@pdx.edu for more information or with project ideas.
STEP (Students in Transportation, Engineering and Planning
Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (STEP) seeks to engage its members in relevant transportation issues through field trips, speakers, projects, and social events. The group works to build relationships and a shared understanding between transportation students from different disciplines, both within PSU and with other universities.
You can check out the STEP website (http://step.groups.pdx.edu), join the STEP e-mail list (https://www.lists.pdx.edu/lists/listinfo/step), and e-mail stepinfo@pdx.edu for more information.
