October 26, 2011
 Community and Regional Planning Associate Professor Lynn Mandarano is dedicated to providing her students with the tools to pursue careers in every aspect of the planning field while positively impacting their communities in the region and well beyond.
Her dedication to furthering the teaching and understanding of planning and sustainability and putting those concepts into practice don’t end when she leaves the classroom, however. She seeks to elevate the planning craft in every facet of her teaching, her research, and through public advocacy. Her support of students, fellow faculty members, administrators, and committees and organizations, both internal and external to Temple has not gone unnoticed.
On Thursday, October 20, Dr. Mandarano received an “Outstanding Faculty Service Award,” presented by the Office of the Provost and the Faculty Senate Steering Committee. This is the first year of what will be an annual awards program. As the award recipient for the School of Environmental Design, she is being recognized for her dedication to her students for the past six years and her ongoing commitment to and effective engagement in service to Temple.
“Dr. Lynn Mandarano has established a very fine record of service to her department, to the School of Environmental Design, to the University, and to the larger community,” said Dr. Teresa Scott Soufas, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the School of Environmental Design. “Many of her service contributions are related to her professional focus on the planning profession as well as on sustainability. The various committees, boards, and task forces she has participated in have helped to promote Temple’s academic mission.”
Joining the Temple faculty in 2005 with nearly 20 years of professional experience in environmental planning and management, Dr. Mandarano was recently granted tenure and promoted to associate professor in the Department of Community and Regional Planning. In 2009 she was also a co-recipient of the Temple University General Education Team Teaching Award.
“Receiving tenure is a huge accomplishment — in essence, it shows that you are capable of being a productive scholar. It gives me the opportunity to ‘broaden the net’ in relation to the research that I like to do, such as studying innovations in regional environmental planning focusing on the evaluation of sustainable development policy and examining collaborative approaches to protect and manage natural resources,” Dr. Mandarano said. “I’m very flattered to have received one of the University’s first Outstanding Faculty Service awards; it certainly was an unexpected honor. I’ve been fortunate in that the service that I’ve been able to participate in at Temple has direct correlations to my interests in sustainability and my research.”
Dr. Mandarano is very active in promoting sustainable development principles within the University and throughout the region. Currently, she is the coordinator for the graduate Sustainable Community Planning Certificate. She was a founding co-chair of the Ambler Campus Sustainability Council, served on President Ann Weaver Hart’s Sustainability Task Force, and is a member of the School of Environmental Design Website Committee, helping to coordinate efforts to make the sites as user-friendly as possible in addition to developing new content of interest to students, faculty, and the planning community.
She is a founding member of the steering committee for the Urban Sustainability Forum at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and has served as a board member for the local nonprofit Green Village Philadelphia. Her work has been published in several leading planning journals including the Journal of Planning Literature, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Journal of Planning, Education and Research, Society and Natural Resources and Journal of the American Water Resources Association. She has authored a chapter in the book Sustainability in American Cities published in 2011 and has edited numerous reports for research projects conducted through Temple’s Center for Sustainable Communities.
According to Dr. Deborah Howe, Chair of the Department of Community and Regional Planning, it is “unusual for assistant professors to play such an active role on major university committees, but Lynn has shown a willingness to provide an extraordinary level of service to the University.”
“While she was on the Sustainability Task Force, Dr. Mandarano was charged with researching sustainable master planning practices at other American institutions of higher education — she co-authored the section of the report on “Master Planning.” At the recommendation of the Sustainability Task Force, President Hart signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment and established a University Office of Sustainability; Lynn served on the search committee for the first Director of Sustainability,” she said. “What is evident in a close examination of her record of service is the substantial degree to which Lynn has successfully integrated her professional interests into her classroom and studio instruction and involved her students to a remarkable and highly beneficial degree in her university, public, and professional service. Her efforts model the type of balance that one would hope to see in all faculty members.”
Dr. Mandarano said in the coming years she’d like to continue to build on her research initiatives while “developing a better understanding of the contributions of innovations in environmental planning and management, which will become increasingly more important as communities across the world strive to become more resilient to the environmental impacts of climate change.”
“This likely will involve adaptation in environmental planning at the regional to the local level and coordination across multiple scales. Cross-cutting research that concentrates on how communities are responding to such complex environmental problems and that links the fields of environmental, collaborative and participatory planning will be significant to planning scholarship and practice,” she said. “I want to become involved in the City of Philadelphia’s Citizens’ Planning Initiative, which trains citizens on different planning processes and the different planning resources available in the city — it’s a focused effort to give people a basic skill set and knowledge to understand and participate in the planning process. I’d like to study how public participation enhances governance.”
For more information about Dr. Mandarano’s research, publications and teaching visit www.temple.edu/ambler/crp/people/faculty-mandarano.htm.
CONTACT: James Duffy, 267-468-8108, duffyj@temple.edu release available by e-mail |
