Springfield Honors Academy Students Explore City Planning and College Life During UMass Amherst Visit

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Nearly 40 students from the Springfield Honors Academy recently visited the Olver Design Building on the UMass Amherst campus to learn about the profession of city planning and get a taste of college life.

The Oct. 25 field trip was part of an ongoing collaboration between the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning (LARP) and the high school. The students, who are primarily juniors in the AP Seminar class of instructor Thomas Bodo, have been learning about how city planners work to resolve problems related to the social and built environment. 

The high schoolers met with regional planning graduate students enrolled in the planning studio course led by Camille Barchers, assistant professor of regional planning. This year, the studio is helping to draft a Comprehensive Climate Action Plan for New Haven County, Connecticut, with a goal of reducing carbon emissions. 

The graduate students led the visiting students through a variety of activities with names like “Emissions Impossible,” “Myth Busters,” and “Would You Rather?,” designed to engage people in local decision making – and teaching them about community engagement in the process. The games seek to replicate real-world scenarios, and the necessary trade-offs involved when trying to help a community reach consensus and act. 

As one academy student put it, “There are so many people that want different things. I learned that we need to find a compromise and collaborate because everyone has a different idea of how to approach problems.”

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The event also afforded an opportunity for the graduate planning students to test their engagement activities before employing them at public meetings.

“I was one of the core people organizing the game. I was nervous at first that the students may not like it because it was the first time that we’ve done this. So, I was excited to watch it play out like this,” says graduate student Raquel Gaba.

After the games, the high schoolers met with Madeleine Charney, research services librarian, who led them on a multi-story scavenger hunt through the W. E. B. Du Bois Library. The students ended their visit with an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Franklin Dining Commons. 

In addition to the faculty, staff and students involved, Henry Renski, department chair and professor of landscape architecture and regional planning, expressed his gratitude to retired extension professor Michael Di Pasquale for developing the initial partnership with the Springfield Honors Academy, LARP office staff, UMass Dining and the Office of Equity and Inclusion for supporting the event through its engagement fund.