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 semester 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.
