Faculty

Two full time faculty members in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (Thompson and Brown) are responsible for teaching transportation courses and conducting research in transportation. Three other full-time faculty members (Audirac, Higgins, and Thomas) focus some of their research on transportation and land use interaction, including a major project for the Public Transit Office of the Florida Department of Transportation on design of access to public transportation. In addition, several adjunct faculty members support the transportation planning specialization.

Gregory L. Thompson Ph.D., Professor. (850) 644-8514; gthompsn@coss.fsu.edu

A.B. (Geography), University of California, Davis, 1968. M.C.P. (Urban Planning), University of California, Berkeley, 1970. Ph.D. (Social Science), University of California, Irvine, 1987. Professor Thompson joined the Department in 1988, after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the Hagley Museum and Library, doing historical research about the Pennsylvania Railroad. He has held professional positions as a transportation planner at both the metropolitan and state levels, in both this country and Canada. He teaches courses in transportation policy analysis, transportation demand analysis, evaluation of alternative transportation and land use plans, and in economic base analysis. He has published in both the professional and academic literature on transportation topics. His first book, The Passenger Train in the Motor Age: California 1910-1941 was published in late 1993 by the Ohio State University Press. His major research interest is studying the role of public transportation in auto-dominated societies, both historically and in the present day.

Jeffrey R. Brown, Ph.D., Assistant Professor. (850) 644-8519; jbrown2@mailer.fsu.edu

B.A. (Geography) UCLA, 1996. M.A. (Urban Planning) UCLA, 1998. Ph.D. (Urban Planning) UCLA, 2003.
Professor Brown’s primary teaching and research interests are transportation finance, surface transportation policy, and the relationship between transportation and the built environment. The central theme of his research is how the politics of transportation finance has affected the design of the transportation system, and how this design has, in turn, affected both the way travelers use the system and the shape and form of the surrounding built environment. His current research examines the evolution of urban freeway planning in the United States and innovations in public transit fare policy.

Ivonne Audirac, Ph.D., Associate Professor. (850) 644-9801; iaudirac@coss.fsu.edu

B. Arch (Architecture), Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM, Mexico), 1978. M.A. (Social Change International Development), Colorado State University, 1982. M.A.U.R.P (Urban and Regional Planning), University of Florida, 1987, Ph.D. (Sociology), University of Florida, 1988. Professor Audirac's research interests are in growth management, sustainable development, social aspects of urban design, and Latin American planning and development. She has conducted research on concurrency and growth management in Florida, NAFTA and the electronics industry in Guadalajara, Mexico; residential preferences for "New Urbanism" in Florida; and is presently working on a book on rural sustainable development. During the summer of 1998 she and Thompson worked together on a study for FDOT investigating the economic and political obstacles to transit oriented development. She teaches courses on planning methods and sustainable development.

Harrison T.  Higgins, A.I.C.P., Planner-in-Residence, (850) 644-8513; hhiggins@garnet.acns.fsu.edu

Harrison T. Higgins is an urban designer and planner in private practice with more than 15 years experience.  Most recently he was the Chief Operating Officer of Planning Technologies in Albuquerque, New Mexico and President of the New Mexico chapter of the APA.  Mr. Higgins is also a former adjunct member of the faculty of the City College of New York and an instructor at UCLA and SCI-Arc.  His work has been published in Planning, Lotus, and Offramp, by the Princeton University Press and in the Los Angeles Times; and he has presented papers at numerous conferences and symposia.

Richard A. Hall, Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning. M.S. Virginia Polytechnic, 1971. Case studies in transportation/land use planning, evaluation of the transportation planning process, the new urbanism and transportation planning.

Donald Lewis, Visiting Instructor of Urban and Regional Planning. M.S.P. Florida State University, 1980. Transportation systems management, hurricane evacuation planning, highway capacity manual, introduction to transportation planning.

Renatus N. Mussa, P.E., Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering. Ph.D., Arizona State University. Traffic Engineering and Operations, Highway Geometric Design, Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Wei-Chou Virgil Ping, P.E., Associate Professor in Civil Engineering. Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin. Transportation Design and Materials, Pavement Design and Management, Geotechnical Engineering, Transportation Safety Issues.

Ike Ubaka, Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning
Mr. Ubaka holds a master's degree in public administration from the University of California, Riverside (1984) and a master's of arts in urban and regional planning from the University of California at Los Angeles (1994) with an emphasis in transportation planning. He has worked in administration and planning for the Orange County (CA) Transit District, the Southern California Rapid Transit District, and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Currently he works as project manager, transit systems planning, for the Public Transit Office of the Florida Department of Transportation. He may be reached at (904) 488-7774.

Rob Schiffer, AICP, Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning
Mr. Schiffer holds a master's degree in urban and regional planning from Florida State University and currently is project manager on the statewide modeling and planning process study for the Florida Department of Transportation. With fifteen years of experience, he was until 2002 manager of Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan's core group of transportation planners and modelers. Since then he established Cambridge Systematics’ Tallahassee office.

Last revised: 23 August 2005