A professional report is required for completion of the master of city and regional planning (M.C.R.P.) degree. The report certifies that the student has developed organizational, research, and language skills at an acceptable level for a graduate of the Rutgers program. This report can also be of great use to the M.C.R.P. graduate, demonstrating analytic and writing skills to employers and other professional contacts.
The report itself may be based on a term paper completed for a graduate urban planning course and can be focused on a wide range of topics. The finished report will be approximately 3,000 to 5,000 words (15 to 20 double-spaced pages), and reviewed and revised as needed to reflect professional level work. The paper will be written to conform to the guidelines of the Journal of the American Planning Association. The completed paper will be submitted to a faculty reviewer, often the professor of the course for which it was written. The faculty reviewer will outline the general terms of any revisions or additional work that is needed. However, the report is the student's responsibility, just as this type of project would be in a professional organization.
Since the professional report is a requirement for graduation, it is important to keep track of submission dates and allow ample time for review and revision. An initial draft of the report should be presented for review to the faculty member no later than three months prior to graduation.
Finally, this report is not a thesis but usually an extension of work already undertaken for a course. It is also possible to develop a report outside of a formal class based on personal research or a project completed through a center or institute at Rutgers. The report presents an opportunity to take a topic of interest and develop it into a professional level presentation.
