This final episode celebrates the Black students in UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design (CED). The episode documents the students’ learning journeys and provides an opportunity for reflection of their education within the graduate programs at CED. The series of conversations in this episode will close out this iteration of Community Visions. And since the origins of the Community Visions podcast came from the Black student experience in the 1990s, we would like to close out with the students’ experiences some 30 years later.

The experience of Black students and students of color in planning programs has been studied by academic scholars and the episode provides further insights on the experiences of Black students using CED as a case study. Graduate-level planning programs generally have low levels of Black representation and the episode explores the experiences of the Black students at CED during a time when racial equity and conversations regarding reparations are increasingly included in the educational discourse. 

We speak with Erika Foster, Tucker McPhaul, Xavion Freedom, Keira Thompson, Tera Johnson, Anisha Kimble and Anaise Jean-Phillippe. The students interviewed address how their intentions for engaging the planning and design fields have shifted or remained the same. In addition, the episode explores what learnings the students intend to bring with them as they progress through their academic and professional careers. The episode also provides recommendations for the College of Environmental Design to align its programs and curriculum with anti-racist practices in the planning and design fields.