Five Episodes of Urban Discovery as a Student Recruitment Strategy in Planning

The literature on graduate-level studio and capstone courses, and the steady decline in student enrollment in recent years demand creative pedagogies to lure undergraduate students into planning. This paper explores the role of self-discovery at the undergraduate level as a conduit toward increasing student recruitment. Forty-seven University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) non-planning major students examined five episodes of urban discovery in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Metro area in two consecutive semesters. Post-course evaluations show how both student cohorts reflected upon their learning outcomes, and at least 27 percent of the twenty-six respondents expressed eagerness to pursue planning graduate degrees.