Background
Community, Environment, and Planning (CEP) is an award-winning, interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree program offered through the College as one of the University's interdisciplinary undergraduate programs. CEP has gained distinction as a model for a highly personalized, active, and relevant educational experience within a large research institution. Housed in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, CEP students liberally draw upon the entire range of courses, faculty, and programs at the UW.
The problems we face in this world are simply too great to be met without active engagement from all perspectives and knowledge. To this end, a CEP education is founded on the following: start where you are; articulate and embrace a vision of how you intend to make a difference in the world; construct a plan, with guidance from faculty and peers, of CEP seminars and cross-disciplinary courses and field experiences; move deliberately with it in the final two years of undergraduate education; through first-hand experience and in the context of the CEP community of learners, become acquainted with effective ways for working constructively together to anticipate and address critical issues facing the complex communities and world we inhabit.
A CEP education is fully lived, not passively taken. CEP students actively make their education in community with others. Students learn from learning groups of seventeen. Each group comprises a community of mutual learning that requires commitment, personal investment, and strong teamwork strategies for two years. Through six interconnected, quarterly seminars students engage the core content of the major: community, environment, and planning. These contemporary academic fields and areas of research include the study of community as subject and practice, exploration of the ecological context of all societal life, and an investigation of the potentials of planning for developing strategies for positive change.
What is CEP all about?
Community, Environment and Planning is an award winning, interdisciplinary undergraduate major. It is a major in leadership and democracy, where students play a distinctive role in designing their own degree. It is structured for students who are interested in living their values and working their visions--not waiting until graduation to do so.
CEP has gained distinction as a model alternative program within a traditional university setting, providing and supporting students a personalized and active educational experience.
As a community, students extend beyond the classroom through service learning, internships, community projects and study abroad. Theory and practice unite.
What makes CEP different?
Students are required to be self-motivated on a different level. First, students create an individual study plan for which courses to take.
Second, they write a narrative self-evaluation every quarter in place of a numeric grade. Students must reflect on their individual performance through their evaluation that is recorded on their official transcript.
Third, students rotate facilitating classroom discussions and governance meetings with their peers, faculty, and staff.
Finally, students experience learning in the community--not just in the classroom. One requirement includes completing a quarter long internship or creating a project in collaboration with a community organization.
What do students learn in CEP?
CEP students learn how to learn. They are responsible to design, develop, and deliver on their own education for themselves by learning how to work with others in a wide variety of group situations and organizational settings.
Each of our students, in cooperation with sixty-three other junior and seniors, commit him or her self to the development and operation of the CEP student-led governance. Governing our multifaceted major demands significant time and energy from every single participant; however, the payoff is priceless.
Students acquire skills that directly apply to careers, practices, and expectations within a number of professional fields, including: policy negotiation, facilitation, community organization and development, environmental activism, social education, public administration, urban design, public affairs, and law.
What have CEP students done after graduating?
Many of our students go on to graduate programs both here in Seattle and throughout the Northwest region, as well as all across the country. They have been accepted into prestigious universities including: Stanford, Columbia, Princeton, and Cornell, and in areas as varied as Law, Theology, Urban Planning, Public Affairs, Ecology, Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, International Studies, and Business, among others.
In addition, our graduates work in/for: local and regional governments, non-profit and corporate organizations, social and environmental groups, educational institutions, the arts, housing development, transportation, communication, consulting, etc. Some have joined the Peace Corp and AmeriCorp, while others have gone on to companies like Microsoft.
What else are CEP students involved in?
Current junior projects include: working with the City of Seattle to research low-income housing for environmental inequity, collaborating with Pomegranate to improved design for a community in Kent, developing a brochure for incoming juniors, organizing a month-long Housing and Homelessness Teach-in and Hunger Banquet, writing articles and designing the CEP newsletter, touring around the Duwamish river with Seattle's Sound Keeper, and much more.
Is CEP a competitive major?
Yes. Every applicant will write five short essays, submit a transcript, and undergo an interview process with a panel of current CEP students, faculty, staff, and alumni. It is determined at the interview whether there is a mutually beneficial fit between the individual and the program.
Can I visit?
Yes. Just call to confirm the course, time, and location. In addition, guests are invited anytime to attend weekly governance meetings, starting at 8:30 every Friday morning each quarter in Gould Hall / Room 436. Just be there, observe, and join in.
