Fellowship
Sojourner Truth Fellow Position
This position is intended to recruit scholars who will bring issues of race and ethnicity into teaching and research in any substantive area related to urban and regional planning for a semester or an academic year. Professors on sabbatical, faculty beginning teaching careers, students who are writing dissertations, reflective practitioners, and individuals at any other stages of their careers are invited to apply. Applicants should have interest in educating both professionally oriented students and future scholars and are expected to be committed to scholarly and/or creative and professional work.
Sojourner Truth, a freed slave, became a leading abolitionist and feminist of the nineteenth century. One of her last major projects was an initiative to provide land to freed slaves. She was a resident of Michigan for the last 25 years of her life.
- Gloria Robinson, FAICP
- 2009 Sojourner Truth Fellow
She will teach a course entitled Big-City Politics and Planning, where she will impart her thirty-year career as a planning and economic development professional, which includes positions in both the public and private sectors.
Gloria W. Robinson is currently chief operating officer for Heritage Vision Plans, where she has worked for three years, serving as a consultant for 18 months before moving to chief operating officer in 2006. Since joining Heritage, Robinson has worked with the company on many organizational development and process improvement activities, including leading the proposal effort that enabled Heritage to successfully win the Ford Motor Company Salaried Vision Program for a second three-year contract term.
Prior to Heritage, Robinson served in the administration of former Detroit Mayor Dennis W. Archer, first as director of planning & development, and later as group executive for economic development. Under her leadership, the city attracted over $20 billion in new development, including many of the major development projects in the city, such as the Compuware World Headquarters, General Motors World Headquarters, Campus Martius Park and surrounding development, Ford Field, and Comerica Park.
In addition, Robinson also served in the administration of former President Bill Clinton as an appointee. She was assistant to the secretary for community empowerment at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C., where she led the Urban Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community Initiative under the leadership of HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Vice President Al Gore. She also assisted the vice president in organizing and conducting several business round tables.
Gloria Robinson holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan, where she was elected to the Mortarboard Senior Women's Honorary Society, and she holds a Master of Urban Planning from Michigan State University. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and a registered community planner in the State of Michigan. She was elected as a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners in 2004.
- Patrick Rhodes
- Soujourner Truth Visiting Lecturer in Urban Planning, 2007 and 2008
He will teach an architecture studio and a course in URP entitled: Recovering Detroit: A Comparative Understanding of Center Cities and its Application in Rebuilding Communities.
Patrick is the founder and Executive Director of Project Locus, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to addressing critical problems in underserved communities through architecture, planning, and urban design. He has worked in communities across the country including Los Angeles, Boston and Baltimore and has worked with design professionals, students and academic institutions across the country. After Hurricane Katrina, Patrick began working through Project Locus in New Orleans to aid in the rebuilding process. During the summer of 2006 with 35 student volunteers, he designed and built the House of Dance and Feathers Mardi Gras Indian Museum and Community Center in the Lower Ninth Ward. He holds the Master's of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture.
