USM’s L-A College to Offer Community
Development Course
April 2004
A graduate course in Community Development will be taught
this summer at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn College. Offered
through the University’s Muskie School of Public Service,
the class will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:30 to 8:00
p.m. beginning May 18 and ending July 1.
This three-credit course will include an investigation of
the nature and role of community development activities as
a strategy to increase the assets a community has at its disposal
to solve problems. Students will examine both local government
and not-for-profit sector organizations with a focus on public/private
partnerships and community development corporations as major
vehicles for contemporary community development efforts. The
continuing role of the federal Community Development Block
Grant program will also be examined.
The course will be taught by Mark Lapping, Ph.D., professor
of public policy and management at the Muskie School. The
former provost of USM, Professor Lapping is a planner by profession
and was founding dean of the Bloustein School of Planning
and Public Policy at Rutgers University. Author of several
books, he has also written more than 150 articles and monographs,
and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American
Planning Association, the Journal of Rural Studies, Agriculture
and Human Value, and Small Towns. He has been a consultant
to governments and agencies throughout North America and in
several other nations and is currently working on problems
in Canada and Estonia, as well as Maine.
Lapping notes that community development fundamentally concerns
itself with both how we live in the present and how we choose
to live in the future. “It represents mastery over drift;
that's what community development is all about . . .providing
options, plans and strategies which permit the flowering of
civil society."
The course, CPD 652 Community Economic Development, is open
to both undergraduate and graduate students. Registration
is now open and will continue through the first week of classes.
Anyone who wished to enroll may contact the LAC Business Office
at 753-6530. For more information or advising assistance,
please contact Roger Philippon, assistant dean at the College
at 753-6560 or philippo@usm.maine.edu.
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