Roundtable Presentations

1^st presenter:

The first question was "what should the planning program include?" We got into a pretty heated discussion at our table because we had different backgrounds and we all seemed to agree that the education programs for the planners should be a basis for the planning profession - a basis for the work in planning and should prepare the students for professional planning and development in the field. It should be based on real life scenarios and the students should be discovering the planning processes that are used to find the solutions in the field for all the planning problems. Also, there should be a lot of communication between the planners and the students. There should be a lot of field trips to the planning commissions, planning offices, and government buildings, and there should be field trips to public hearings and conferences, etc.

There was a little bit of argument in our group about what was better - a broad education in all different types of planning like a four year degree program where you get a little bit of everything or if it should be real specific to a trade in planning like COGS. We do have a fairly broad range, but it is only two years and we do concentrate on the technical a little more.

There was a little bit of argument about what is better and what gets the students more prepared for the work place - if it was technical or a narrow stream on what their education or technical trade should be, or if it was a broad outlook on all of planning. We got into what the three planning schools here in Nova Scotia offer and what the differences were.

The second question was "what continuing education opportunities should there be?" We were discussing if the academic community should lead or follow. That was a subtitle for the question. We said the schools should follow to meet the CIP and AIP requirements but provide a fuller education than the minimum standards of the CIP and there should be more of a communication in maybe creating a partnership between the CIP and the AIP and alumni of the schools so they can create newer courses and update them. CIP would know what things need to be updated in their offices so if we created a partnership with the schools, more communication would be updated a bit better and would run a little more smoothly.

We all agreed CIP should be more involved and have a greater role in the universities and colleges that teach planning. The schools have the resources to offer the courses for community education so CIP may have an idea of what is needed and the skills that need to be updated. Also, they should be involved in holding short-term courses for people updating their skills that are already involved in the planning profession.

The third question was "additional opportunities among the schools". We did not get into that a whole lot. We basically were talking about the partnerships between the planning profession and the schools and we were talking a lot about partnerships and credit agreements between schools -between different courses that the schools have because they do hold a lot of different types of programs that are all wonderful. We were talking about how NSCAD has an agreement with St. Mary's with the geography programs and how NSCAD also has an agreement with COGS. We think that holds a lot of potential if there were more agreements between schools if credits could be traded.

2^nd presenter (Gail):

We have a long list of what we thought the programs should provide for the planning practitioner. It got longer as we heard the debates. In the NSCAD and TUNS environments, we thought more GIS should be available to them - more technology skills to go with the theory base. Also more in-depth research skills, time management skills, and communication skills - not with the emphasis being completely on public presentations but more on listening skills, understanding, and being able to analyze what you are listening to. A comprehensive understanding of geography was important. Economics and project feasibility - not only being able to come up with an interesting plan but also realizing the constraints of economics and actually being able to come up with a plan you can actually implement.

Another big thing was actually understanding the legal framework - the pragmatic aspect of administration. One of the comments was that students should have to go through the process of applying for, for example, a development permit. Going through the entire process and seeing things from the other side of the coin - what the clients go through and how intimidating it can be for them so that when you are say, for example, working in a municipality you have those skills to understand how they feel - how difficult it is sometimes to apply for these things without having the background that we learn in school. Another important thing we decided we should be learning in school isbeing able to explain all this theory we've learned in plain English to someone who doesn't have a degree - you can explain why these by-laws are important and why, for example, we have to have so many feet setback.

For the other disciplines, for example, planning technicians and development officers, we felt they needed more theory - more understanding of why they are doing a particular job.

For the continuing education question - we came up with another question, "is it API's role to assist planners to stay current or is it up to yourselves to do that on your own whereas API could come in and provide these courses for you. A lot of people work in rural environments and you can't drive into Halifax and take a night course. There is a new technology that is coming in that we may be able to use the virtual campus - you can do correspondence courses all across Nova Scotia through the Internet. It's expensive right now but in a few years once the technologies have been honed, it will come down in price. Some of the planners that have been working in the municipalities in other areas feel their technology skills are low because they did not learn them in school and they thought it was important to learn these skills but also on the other side if you don't use them, for example, you take a course for a week on ArcInfo but are only using it three or four times a year you are going to lose these skills. The big question is how much does a planner have to know about the technology side of things and still be able to work with their technicians and other staff.

Relative to the question with the academic community, we felt there was not enough collaboration between academics and professionals. Professionals for the most part don't know what we're doing in school, don't know the research that we're conducting, and they also argue that we're not doing the sort of research they would like to see us do. If we were to ask them, perhaps they would lead us in a different direction. However, you also come across the fact that professionals are very busy. They don't have time to take two afternoons off a semester and come and listen to our presentations -they're at conferences and at meetings. It's difficult, so another question we raised is "whose responsibility is it?" Is it the practitioners responsibility to stay current or is it our responsibility as universities and students to keep the practioners informed and send them copies. Specifically at NSCAD we do a two page summary, very short and concise of what research we're doing. Would the practitioners be interested in seeing this sort of summaries of what we're doing at the universities? We feel we are missing the link between two very important parts of the planning profession - the students and the professionals.

The final question with the skill exchanges, NSCAD and TUNS - we take courses at each other's universities. Also, we take courses at St. Mary's. We fall under the horrible problem of scheduling. Trying to take a course at St. Mary's where they designate the calendar for 10,000 students is difficult. They're not going to change an entire calendar for four NSCAD students. A lot of times we can't take courses because they don't fit into our schedule. In NSCAD, most afternoons you're in studios, whereas at St. Mary's most of their core courses are offered in the afternoons. We are missing an opportunity to take courses such as economics and the other things that Donna Davis-Lohnes was talking about yesterday in her debate, things like basic engineering. It's very difficult. I think if we were to come up with a partnership between the universities, between the registrar offices, so that at the beginning of the year they examine core courses that could be used all theuniversities and come up with the basic scheduling where if I did want to take a course at Dalhousie or St. Mary's, it would fit into my schedule. We also thought that exchanges with NSCAD, COGS, and TUNS would be good in terms of training with a technical experience, work theory. For example, instead of doing four semesters at COGS, you'd do three semesters at COGS and one at NSCAD. Instead of doing four years at NSCAD, you'd exchange one of your semesters in theory for a term at COGS - sort of balancing two aspects - theory and technical experience.

Third presenter (Chris Reddy):

Our group had a real good cross-section of compatriants. In the first question we dealt with "what should a planning program include for the practicing planner?" We thought some of the missing elements were transportation planning which seems to be a driving force right now in a lot of issues, especially in the suburban areas; we thought that management skills might be a little premature -you need to have some understanding of management issues but you do not need to know how to manage a planning office; computer skills, including GIS, but generally being able to sit down and operate on a variety of systems because the complexity of computer systems in most planning offices nowadays has gone a step beyond. I know in our office we run three separate systems - MAC, PC, and UNIX. We are running a separate mini network to deal with Corel packages as opposed to the main system which runs on Microsoft.

We thought on the second issue, other disciplines, the list was incomplete. There are planning technicians, and development officers. We actually chose to include GIS technicians as almost something separate because in most planning offices today we have inherited an older system, so you'll find yourself with staff that have no GIS skills and are technically computer aided draftsman as well as needing to move into the GIS or to have GIS technicians in the same office. Sometimes it's hard to justify the old draftsman sitting there doing the actual drawings but now using a computer.

On the third question relative to continuing education opportunities, we felt continuing education was essential for developmental and technical skills, but we also thought there was a need to make sure they result in some sort of certification. You've all been to this sort of program where if an employer sends you off to take a speaking course you get the nice little certificate at the end or you become involved in a leadership program. It costs a lot of money, they have a ceremony and a couple of drinks at the end, and you get a nice little certificate to put on the wall and then you forget all about it. What we need is much more highly developed skill set opportunities that we can carry on. Someone earlier mentioned that in the rural environments it's hard to get into the major centres for training and education or continuing education. In the context of New Brunswick we're in major centres in the Maritime context but it is really difficult to find suitable training and at a suitable price that salaries will even allow yourself to afford or that the employer will contribute to. MBAs are out of the question for most municipal employers yet they are generally available everywhere. You can attend UNB at a cost of $23,000 a year, for a three year program.

We felt the last two questions were relatively inter-related - the additional opportunities for skillexchange between schools is related to continuing education. Part of the problem is scheduling which can be addressed by just changing the way educational services are delivered to the users. I understand there may not be a huge market but a lot of what we do through the years is inter-disciplinary so a lot of the courses if they were packaged properly could maybe be put over the Internet and available at a reasonable price, pre-packaged. Video streaming allows you to pick-up the technology, even allows you to view a lecture, download it and save it for later viewing. Those things are available now. They're a little bulky and you have to have a good machine. I'd estimate within two years most people with desktop machines will have full capacity to accept that kind of feat and that same concept would feed back into cross-pollination of programs. It would also deliver potential and continuing education to the people in the field. Once the course is packaged and developed, it's done. All you'd need is a help line service on the other end of the line to answer your questions about the course requirements. I think it's something that we need to look to as educational institutions, as professionals in all fields - planners, lawyers, everybody. Everybody has to look towards that because we're all working in locations that are scattered around the universe. If the opportunities are there you're going to go there.

In closing, I think we felt pretty good about what was going on and even that this discussion was happening - that somebody was asking us to participate in the possibility of these things happening in our field and that the universities and API was involved in these issues. We were pretty comfortable to discuss these things. It was really hard taking notes to define the line between the questions because of the full conversation and that's probably good because one of the things we all know as planners is that it's hard to isolate one issue from another. Everything is always interlocked and interlinked so a resolution on one issue will drag along solutions and changes in other situations.

Fourth speaker (Shawn):

Our group really did not address it question per question. We covered what the present institutions cover, ie., DalTech - we covered what their core courses are, such as law, planning practice, and quantitative methods in the various studios, and the courses they offer in the history and theory of planning. We looked at how the studios integrated the various skills you pick up from the various courses in applications. As well with COGS, in the planning practices they do site planning and site engineering which DalTech really doesn't cover at all. NSCAD has their law, theory, and research methods. We saw that in all these courses there was a need to develop public speaking skills. There had been courses in speaking at DalTech but there were problems with the content of how it was given. As opposed to having a separate course in public speaking, they looked at there being a better way to integrate public speaking within the other general courses. Then questions arose that it was done to a certain extent at COGS and DalTech but we discussed whether it's actually marked or whether it's just students coming in and standing up in front of the class. In addition to public speaking, we also recognize that writing skills are very important to the practice of planning for the future planner.

The group then went on to identify there was a need for a core skill set for planners. For the core skills taught in the various institutions, there was no consistency as to what exactly the core entailed. I guess that's why there are the separate schools in the first place. If they looked at a separate core,with the way amalgamation is these days, they would have been integrated awhile ago.

The group then went on to identify that there are many key features which are required. One of them would be the characteristics of an educated person for a planner. The planning schools have a responsibility in this area. You just can't expect to be a "techie" and expect to be a well rounded professional planner. Then they went on to say there's a need to have specific policy, zoning, and technical related land skills. The concepts are very nice but you actually need a way to put the concepts in action on the ground at times. There was a need for planners to have an understanding of the actual development practice - what a developer has to go through in terms of financial matters and planning matters. It was recognized there's more need for a "nuts and bolts" approach - that the students aren't actually ready to work when they graduate. Then there was the question of what level of detail these issues need to be looked at. There's an overview of theory but is there a benefit in actually teaching the basic practice of it?

We went on to recognize that for the practicing planner, continuing education is very important but it was employers who should take the role. In addition to just having to convince your employer to fund your continuing education, there's a problem with institutions providing the courses that your employer could send you to take. There's a lack of such courses. Ways of addressing this that were looked at were such things as Cyber University and using interactive over the Web or through computer usage stay at home courses through correspondence methods. We also recognized that some professions such as a dentistry require a certain amount of continuing education to retain their designation. If you want to maintain your CIP designation, you should have to go every three years or every six months to take an upgrading course of some kind.

Schools are not providing the leadership in developing theory and practice. There's a need for academics to work outside the academic institution. Some do but we think this possibly should be increased or made a mandatory component of their continuing activity in the academic sphere. There is a legal professional model that we thought might be able to be adapted for use by planners.

There would be a benefit of interaction and integration between the various planning schools within the region. We also recognize at a practical level that it is very difficult mixing the levels of technical to the undergraduate and graduate level. There were faculty barriers, institutional barriers, program barriers, that the integration, while not impossible, wouldn't just be an afternoon session. It would be a fairly arduous undertaking but would be possible and perhaps beneficial.

We also came to the realization it's a tougher world now for graduates and that we are expected to produce more quickly. Perhaps institutions and employers and the educators need to get together and have a greater level of coordination between what is in demand, what is in supply, and try to come to some generalized communication network so that people will actually be able to benefit from each other's experiences.

The final thing that we discovered in the educational or even in the employment world is that rural planning is not promoted as it should be. A lot of places now treat rural planning as if it's just urban planning without sidewalks. You just can't take planning for downtown Toronto and expect it towork in Hants or Kings County. There's a lack of jobs in certain areas which discourages the education in rural planning. We can have a lot of highly educated rural planners but then they'll have to go to work in Toronto or New York City. Relative to the suggestion for an unpaid internship system to give students experience, if educational tuitions go down that might be a good idea. The

experience would be fairly well appreciated and welcomed by students but I don't know about the unpaid thing.

Fifth speaker (Vernon):

At our table, a lot of the comments were the same as what we already heard this morning. Our table wasn't all that different. I think as Shawn mentioned, in a round about way, we kind of got to the questions but we didn't really address them as they were outlined. We felt when we started off that we were working in a little bit of a vacuum and that it might have been helpful if we had had a five or ten minute presentation on what the different schools offer in terms of course curriculum. It would have given us a basis to look at what skill sets are being taught and then what we might throw out as additions to that.

The other thing we looked at was what are employers really looking for in terms of planning students that are coming out of planning schools into their, for the most part, first job, with some limited experience through work programs, etc. I think here in Nova Scotia, once you get outside the metro area, you're really dealing with a rural situation, so we are looking at rural applications in a small town. We are looking at students having the basic skill sets that we would expect from a planning school, knowing something about what an "s" is and how you prepare one of those and by-laws and so forth. Also, GIS is probably the newest tool that everyone is working with and I think we are all coming now to expect that is going to be an integral part of how we are going to be doing planning in the future. What employers seem to be looking for are people who have an interest in the area you are trying to attract them to.

I think we all go through the process here in Nova Scotia where many of us are training grounds. We'll have a planner for two or three years, a planner is learning basic skills and getting that experience he or she needs, and then moves on. For many of us, that's fine, we go through the training, but maybe we don't get the benefits of the third, fourth, or fifth year.

Also important is having a bit of background and knowledge about what our Maritime or Atlantic area is about. I think that is one of the reasons why twenty years ago, we wanted to see some planning schools established in the Maritimes so there was that entity and interest.

Two other points in terms of what employers are looking for is "what is the individual". We all come out of the same planning programs in planning schools, but we are looking for individuals that can identify and work into the program that we might have; people who can identify and relate to our PAC members and our councillors; and people they are going to be working with. Obviously to be able to do that, communication skills are essential. It was interesting in the couple of hours we were discussing this how often we come back to this thing of communication with the people youdeal with, the politicians, the development industry, the general public - that's essential. I don't know how you get that in the planning schools. Maybe we as planning operations shouldn't be expecting too much in terms of a new student coming into a program and having all of the skills.

I think it is important to have that introduced to them and for them to have an ability or a way in which they can know a real situation or have some benefit to practice those skills.

In terms of what the planning programs include, generally if the students are getting well rounded skills, an introduction to a variety of things, they are not going to use them all but at least if they have an introduction to all of them, that's important. One of the things we zeroed in on was process. We as planners learn certain things and have a certain way of doing things, we learn how to work with various stakeholders. We also learn how to bring people together to find common ground and that's important and we may apply that in a traditional public planning environment, in the private sector, and we may apply it in something that is unrelated to planning. It's a skill set that we learn. It's really the process that we go through in applying those skills that's essential to what you as students can expect to apply and expect to benefit from, particularly as your careers may start in a public planning agency and may go from there into administration. It's really that skill set that you are going to apply that's going to be most beneficial to the students. It's also important to be a generalist as opposed to a specialist. Everybody has certain aptitudes. We will be looking for that. What do they bring to what we already have that would be of benefit to us? It is important to know both the theory and the technical side. We thought it was important for them to have an introduction and an ability in terms of project management. They will be called upon to manage various project or at least apply that kind of a skill process. Budgeting is something they will get into eventually, maybe not initially but it doesn't hurt to know what's involved in budgeting, particularly in relation to project management. Planning ethics - knowing what's expected of you as a student going into a planning program and that relates not to just professional ethics, but also relates to work ethic. What is your work ethic, what is your dedication, what is your interest? Planning with flare was one of the phrases thrown out. We kind of lose that. Again, that comes back to communication. Having this interest and demonstrating this interest that you have in the profession you have chosen. It's important that those come into play.

At our particular table, we had broad representation - we had the British Columbia view, we had the Newfoundland view, we found that all the kinds of things we're looking for are very similar and it doesn't really matter what part of the country you're in.

It was interesting again coming back to what the individual brings into a program and a lot of it can relate to the personality of that person and whether the person is going to fit into a bigger environment, fit in with the kind of situations and people that you are going to be required to work with.

Political awareness was another area that we talked about. How do you provide an opportunity for students to become aware of just what kind of political environment they get into? What is a typical municipal political situation? I'm not sure how you bring that into the program but it might be something that's interesting to look at.

We also felt that it's important to have a link with economic development. We as planners are planning. The economics of a community, the economics of a community development, the economics of business activity, business development, it's important to have a feel for what that's about and obviously from a planning point of view we have a strong link with that.

Probably to wind up, it would be kind of nice if students coming out have some vision of what they see themselves doing, of what they want to contribute to a planning program they are coming into, and hopefully the program they are coming into has some vision - that we as planners don't lose the fact that we are supposed to be visionary. That is part of what we should be looking for and I hope is part of what the communities, the politicians, and so on, we are dealing with, are also looking for and expecting from us, and how you build that into a program is important.

One other point is that probably the practitioners who are out there in the field can be a valuable resource to the planning schools and to the planning school programs. I'm sure within the metro area you certainly get that kind of input from those that are within the area and obviously there's a good cross-section of resources there. In terms of getting outside the metro area, you're into a little different ball game. You could bring some of those people into the programs in terms of critiquing or it could be programs or studio projects. It might be interesting to have more of a link between the practitioner and the academic in terms of the school program.

Sixth speaker:

We had a table dominated by people that are in the field both in the private consulting industry and working for municipalities. I think we had two people that were associated with the actual schools -Michael Polten and a student from DalTech, so I think that many of our comments were flavored perhaps by the domination of the practicing people as opposed to the students and certainly academics. I think Michael Polten said something very early on that was quite important. He said when you're dealing with these questions, it's quite simple to actually say what's missing. It's quite simple to say we'll do more of this and more of that and it's quite difficult to say if you're going to do more of this what are you going to take away. That's a good question that we quickly dismissed and just said here's what we should do more of.

We were very much in tune in terms of saying we feel the fundamentals of the planning programs, including things such as planning theory and planning history, are very much important to really contribute towards this whole idea of a bit of a flame and fire burning beneath people's feet and having some vision. We really did feel there should be first of all a much greater emphasis, and not through simple matters such as studio courses or getting up and giving a presentation as part of academic work, on almost course work if not one single course dedicated towards communications and it should be communications not in the toastmasters sense but really as a practicing planner. What are the basic things that you are going to be required to do when you're speaking in front of the public, making a pitch to a group, overheads with maps and so on and so forth? You really could make a course out of that which would be really quite invaluable.

We also focused on there being great benefit to having some real nuts and bolts in terms of planning - this has been highlighted as well by other groups. Some basic understanding of civil engineering, technical skills associated with surveying, and so forth. Not to say that any of us are going to be civil engineers or surveyors. There really does need to be an understanding of the basics of these

courses. That's really with respect to our answer towards the question of what a planning program should include for the practicing planner.

Unfortunately with the second question for other disciplines, we really didn't have a great deal of representation - I don't think we really answered that question.

Question three really is "what about continuing education opportunities?" We highlighted the fact that these seem to be perhaps only in the metro area, but we also think in other parts of the Province there are general courses you can take to gain public speaking experiences, but really what we focused on is that there should be direct opportunities, almost in the title of these courses - public speaking for professional planners. Courses such as that. We think there would be enough representation if you didn't generalize so much. We also thought there was an opportunity for our association to have technical conferences on things such as negotiating development agreements. We saw a lot of opportunity there.

With respect to "should the academic community lead or follow the profession", we really did think that things such as minimum standards, even things such as examinations, are already in place. That should really continue to be the role of the professional association. The schools are doing quite a good job in the interface with the professional association and things are going along quite well. Courses or conferences such as this do quite a lot towards the interface between the professionals and the schools.

The additional opportunities for academic skill exchanges between the schools, we touched briefly on this. We took this as being "what opportunities are there really between the planning schools that are there?" We said something simple - there should be more of that. There should be greater opportunities for those types of exchanges. There was a little bit of a conversation about maybe there's opportunities for these schools to be merged. We have two very small schools, for example, the undergraduate program at NSCAD and the graduate program at Dalhousie. Is there a natural fit? That is something I'm sure is a very long conversation but we at least touched on it.

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This document was last modified on January 11, 2000.