In addition to foundations and content area knowledge, planners need strong professional skills in analytics, report writing, infographics, oral presentation, and team management to function successfully in various organizational and political environments. Starting in Fall 2022, 45 semester hours are required: 24 semester hours of core courses, 6 hours of capstone courses (Sustainable Communities Lab I and II), at least 9 semester hours in an area of concentration, and 6 semester hours of electives. See the most recent catalog of planning courses.

Core Curriculum

• Core courses focus on institutions and social, economic, environmental, political, administrative, and legal systems that frame planning, policy analysis, and public decision-making.
• Students also develop the ability to identify social goals and normative criteria for evaluating public policies, and build their quantitative (statistics, forecasting, surveys, regional analysis) and qualitative skills for plan-making and evaluation.

Capstone

In capstone courses, students apply core principles to actual planning problems.

Required Curriculum

10 core courses
5 electives (including 9 s.h. taken within a concentration)
2-semester capstone project

• At the heart of the two-year master's degree in planning is an integrated core curriculum providing students with a solid foundation in social, economic, and public policy analysis.
   
• First-semester courses draw from traditional disciplines, particularly economics and statistics, and are combined with introductions to law, land use and the history, theories, and practice of planning.
   
• As students proceed, increasing emphasis is placed on the development of critical judgment and insight through the application of theories to planning problems and case studies.
   
• Students focus on one or two areas of concentration, as well as complete a major planning research project in our capstone Sustainable Communities Lab courses.
   
• For the capstone project students will apply their knowledge and skills to a planning problem or issue in an Iowa community. This will be done in tandem with the University’s Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities (IISC) which for has been providing public consultation to communities in Iowa for over a decade.

Core Curriculum

Typical Schedule for Full-Time Students

Students with sufficient previous coursework may request a waiver of a core course.