Delo Freitas

Individualized Study
Plan
UW CEP 2014



Contents
Introductory Letter ........................................................................................................................................ 2
Introductory Letter ......................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Courses ......................................................................................................................................................... 4
FALL 2012 .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Courses ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Courses ......................................................................................................................................................... 6
WINTER 2013 ............................................................................................................................................ 6
Courses ......................................................................................................................................................... 7
SPRING 2O13 ............................................................................................................................................. 7
Courses ......................................................................................................................................................... 7
SUMMER-FALL 2013 ................................................................................................................................. 7
Courses ......................................................................................................................................................... 8
WINTER 2014 ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Courses ......................................................................................................................................................... 9
SPRING 2014 ............................................................................................................................................. 9
SUMMER 2014 ........................................................................................................................................ 10
Visual Course Schedule .............................................................................................................................. 10
Internship and Senior Project Goals .......................................................................................................... 11








I ntroductory Letter

To the reader:

Life has often been presented to me as a game, with specific rules, opponents, and most
applicably in this context, specific goals. But in my own life and career, I would like to see my
choices not as chess pieces or means to calculated ends. What I do want is to be flexible, gain
confidence, and understand my motivations and impact on my community as I grow as a person
and as a student.
CEP was not always the path I planned on taking. I spent my first year of college at Humboldt
State University (HSU) in California considering focusing on Architecture and Sustainable
Design but registered as an Environmental Resources Engineering major. I took a variety of
math, science, and engineering courses but quickly discovered my interests and talents lay more
in arts that in sciences. During this time I was actively involved in several volunteering
opportunities. I sang with disabled adults in a local choir, a project I had been involved in since
high school. I assisted senior citizens through an HSU volunteer organization with household
chores, and helped a former teacher in her classroom. It was as much this real-world experience
as my classes that I learned from, and I discovered more and more that the times I was most
satisfied with myself and my life were when I was helping others. What exactly I wanted to
accomplish and how were still not completely clear, but I knew I needed to find a field in which I
could help others and learn from them. In many respects, engineering could have fulfilled many
goals for myself and my career. It did not, however, play to my strengths, nor did it have much
community involvement. I wanted to be able to connect and interact.
Near the end of my first year of college, I decided to apply to UW on the National Student
Exchange transfer system. I was eventually accepted, and moved to Seattle in August 2011. I
entered UW Seattle as an undeclared student and I enrolled in a city planning course to see how
it compared with environmental engineering. Though I was not sure initially what to expect, I
came to love the energy and principles of the program so I applied and was accepted. CEP
encompasses all of what attracted me to both architecture and engineering, but with a more
interpersonal and abstract style that is much more suited to my personality and skills. In such an
environment, I can help others, constantly be working on new projects, and address pertinent
environmental and social issues. I would like my focus in CEP to reflect my goal of helping
others and better understanding myself and the world around me. However, refining these
extremely broad ideas has understandably proved somewhat difficult. What I want to address is
peoples quality of life, and how to maintain and even improve it for the majority of our
population in the future when times may become lean. I believe the next few decades will see
massive growth in cities around the world, and I think planning will be an excellent field in
influencing the way people live in dense urban environments. Design is key in creating spaces in
which people can not only live, but thrive; I would like to be involved in processes that allow
people to connect and create and find people they can call family and places they can call home.
To this end, Im considering pursuing public-sector jobs that marry social and spatial changes,
potentially housing or community development but Im not sure. I do know, however, that I
would like to be employed by a governmental institution. I want to be accountable to the public,
with them as my boss.
Inherent in creating environments in which people can thrive, however, is being able to
understand the people themselveswhat do they need? What do they want? And perhaps most
importantly in my mind, what is precious to them? What makes their lives meaningful and
enjoyable? Not only do I find these questions pertinent, I find them fascinating. I began taking
Anthropology classes on the sideanything that fit and sounded interesting, from Environmental
Justice to Social Theory. It got to the point where I had taken so many credits in the subject, it
seemed silly to not minor in it. I believe this minor supplements my major in CEP, and I just
really enjoy learning about the way people live and interact and think.
Considering planning is my focus, however, I want to make sure when I graduate that I not only
feel like I understand what problems I would like to address, but I also want to know in what
ways they can be addressed, what ways they are currently being addressed, as well as having
skills of my own to possibly address them. These skills will be my methods credits, and I would
like to fill my remaining time with these qualitative courses when possible. These may include
statistics, site planning, architectural drawing, or classes on policy or law, to name a few. A wise
graduate student recently told me that I have the rest of my life to learn whatever interests me,
but that employers want to hire people with pertinent skillsand if these can make me more
effective in understanding how to serve the public interest, that also fits my agenda.
The overarching theme of this ISP, then, is balancehow to most effectively balance the
practical and theoretical, qualitative and quantitative, in order to better myself and hopefully, the
lives of others.
Here goes!





Courses

FALL 2012

CEP 301: The Idea of Community
This class has proved interesting not because it showed me the way communities work
today in practice, but because it gave me a foundation of the philosophy behind many of
the ideas we take for granted now, such as the supremacy of the state, the various theories
on the impetuses of community formation, the nature of labor, and what it means to be
citizen. This class touches on communities indirectly, but the best part about it was
actually the insights it lent me that I was then able to apply to my Intro to Social Theory
course.
Anthropology 369: Introduction to Social Theory (D)
In this intro course we covered so many interesting and useful topics, ranging from
identity in terms of race and sexuality to various methods of state control. I loved it
because it was discussion based and allowed me to interact directly with my peers but
also because it opened my eyes to the way society functions now, and many of its flaws.
Though this class was mostly theory or used case studies from other countries, it strongly
affected my outlook.
Statistics 301: Case Based Statistics (M)
Statistics is challenging because though it has many potential uses for planners,
especially in the interpretation of data, it takes more than one quarter to adequately
understand how to effectively use. My course integrated both mathematics and computer
programming using statistical software; I think it will prove useful but even more so if I
can manage to get into a graduate level statistics course designed for MUP students in
the future.
Engineering 380: Design for Sustainability in the Developing World (M)
This course is designed for all disciplines and gives an introduction to issues in
international sustainable development from an engineering perspective. It essentially
combines lectures on current approaches and potential pitfalls a final project related to
sustainable development, developing research and design skills using real life projects.
Courses

Though discussion tended to involve third world countries, many of the community
outreach, design planning, and community feedback lessons will apply stateside.


URBDP 498 A: Planners in the Workforce
This seminar was helpful in better understand the career options available to planners. It
was also interesting because of the wide variety of ways planners arrived at their current
positions, and the different issues they encountered in the working world.
URBDP 498 F: China-US Professional Workshop and Charrette (M)
This class only lasted through the first few weeks of the quarter, but was especially
interesting because it was so varied. There were CEP, LARCH, ARCH, Real Estate, and
MUP students involved, but also students from the Evans School, and community and
Chinese professionals. It was an interesting perspective on group projects and
presentations, international relations, and community design planning.
URBDP 498 C: Vertilab (M)
I am actually auditing this course but I attend almost every meeting; this course not only
feels more like what planners actually do since we have a specific project and client, but
has given me great opportunities to research what other people are doing to create
community in urban environments.








Courses
WINTER 2013

CEP 302: Environmental Response
This class will explores issues of environmental crisis and societal responses, which is
important both for housing and other planning related fields. We will develop a grounded
perspective in ecological literacy and consciousness as well as focus on the importance of
participation in community-based environmental efforts.
Landscape Architecture 498 F: American Urban Environmental Histories

Anthropology 487: Cultures and Politics of Environmental Justice (D)
This class will give a comparative survey of environmental justice movements in the
world with focus on critical studies of environmental racism, risk, and sustainable
development. It will also provide theoretical knowledge and research methods
incorporating the study of equity and autonomy in environmental impact and risk
assessment and other aspects of environmental policy politics. All of these factors will be
important in ensuring equity for the urban resident, especially in housing.
Geography 445: Geography of Housing
This course will focus on the geography of housing, especially in the United States.
Topics will include: the American dream of home ownership; housing affordability and
differential access to home ownership; homelessness; the history of public housing;
housing demography; residential mobility and neighborhood change, and discrimination
in the housing market.

(On a side note, I may drop my Environmental Justice course for Winter quarter because I would
then have Tuesdays and Thursdays free to find an internship/job.)



Courses
SPRING 2O13

CEP 498: Digital Design Practicum (M)
This graduate-level course was extremely helpful, but challenging-we covered GIS,
Photoshop, InDesign, and Sketch Up in ten weeks. These skills have already proved
extremely helpful in various projects and will be invaluable when designing Senior
Project components.
ANTH 463: Critiques of Contemporary Capitalism
This class focused on something that I have been considering for a long time-is it
possible to have equality in a capitalist society, and if so, what would this look like? If
not, what can we change? Though readings and discussion, we tried to answer these
questionsand though they remained largely unanswerable, it helped me solidify my
belief in bottom-up community projects, and the importance of fostering individual
engagement outside of a capitalist paradigm.
CEP 303: Social Structures and Processes
This course investigates use of formal and informal social structures and processes
within context of community and environment, and looks at patterns and institutions of
social organization and relationships among different sectors. Issues of interrelatedness,
citizenship, knowledge, and communication are discussed.




Courses
SUMMER-FALL 2013

I went to Copenhagen for a semesterI left in August, returning at Christmas, missing all of fall
quarter and part of summer. Modern-day Copenhagen has an international reputation for being a
well-designed city; planners in general apparently are considered more important in Europe than
they are here, and seeing how they plan, what infrastucture is both exisiting and underway, was
inspiring. Their transportation systems and social welfare system are especially interesting. I am
in the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS). They have an urban Studies program there, so I
learned similar materials as I wouldhave at UW, but in a very different context which in itself
influenced my learning.

Classes:
European Urban Life and Development
This was my core course-we covered so many topics during the semster, ranging from
Rome and Anthens to post-soviet Budapest. The focus was the development and shift of
cities, what it meant to be a city dweller, how it affected your perecption of self and
society, and what it meant for social relations and quality of life.

European Urban Design Theories
This course was wonderful, taught by a former employee of Gehl Architects, who
asked us to look critically at cities, both socially and spatially. The class covered public
space, edgelands, and modernity through film, site visits, and social theory.
.
Innovation through Design Thinking (M)
Innovation through design focused on two long group projects, diagnosing and
prototyping solutions to problems related to studying abroad. The real takeaway was the
method, and the mindset: dont fear failure and iteration, get user input, get data, use data.
It was a great class, especially in the context of citizen participation in planning
processes.

Danish Language
Danish language was a class I took in order to be respectful to the Danes. It was
basically an attempt to understand them culturally and linguistically; though it had
nothing to do with my major, Im glad I took it.
Courses
WINTER 2014

CEP 461: Ethics and Identity
I loved this course because Mark teaches philosophy and political theory in practice.
His course covered examinations of personal, societal, vocational, environmental,
planning ethics as well as discussions on values, human potential, ecological context,
moral responsibility, and self-awareness. His goal of constructing positive, diverse
views of humanity, environment regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, and beliefs will of
course come in handy when engaging communities as a planner.
URBDP 474: Introduction to Site Planning (M)
This course was an introduction to site planning; how it is regulated; why it is
important to know; and how to carry out its key tasks, including residential subdivision
and mixed-use development layout; basic topographical and hydrological analysis and
manipulation; roadways, parking and hierarchies of circulation, and site design detail. It
challenged me in a way that no other planning classes hada very practical course.
ANTH 369: Visual Anthropology

This class analyzed contemporary issues through photography, a skill extremely useful
in understanding space and place. The class taught me to look critically at both literal and
figurative framing of content, and practice sensitive engagement of communities
involved in field research.

URBDP 598 W: Housing Policy

I still hope to focus on housing and anything housing related that is offered is
interesting and needed.there arent that many courses speaking to housing specifically.
This class was a perfect fit, and taught me a lot about the practical ins and outs of
affordable housing from planning to financing.
Courses
SPRING 2014

CEP 462: Community and Environment
CEPs capstone quarter merges core seminars, disciplinary courses in major,
community field experiences for mastery of personal knowledge and skills. There was
reflection and synthesis of themes in major; engagement with contemporary issues and
comparison of theoretical definitions of community and environment with individual
philosophies and knowledge.
CEP 446: Internship
It was a shame to take this class with one foot out the door, but this is where it fit. My
internship that had been underway for a couple months so it should was easy to apply
what I learned although I met in a small-group setting to fit with my schedule.
ENG 298 A: Community Literacy (D)
This course fulfills my composition credit I needed for graduation, but became my
favorite course I had taken in a while. As a necessary component of this course, students
volunteered for four hours per week at a local elementary school in Lake City, one of the
most ethnically diverse areas in the Seattle metro area. Working with children and
learning how to engage them was excellent learning experience that I know can be
applied to adults, too.

SUMMER 2014

Obviously, Im graduated! But I think this would be a great time to do the AISEC internship
program that Cailin Wang was involved with this past summer. I am most likely going to be
travelling with AISEC to Colombia and teaching English and cultural awareness until December
2014.
Visual Course Schedule



I nternship and Senior Project Goals

I volunteered with the Hillman City Collaboratory in South Seattle for the last two quarters of
my senior year. It was an excellent chance to see a more diverse area of the city that is
undergoing massive change and redevelopment.
For my senior project, I tackled cross-cultural differencenamely the differences between
Denmark and the US that have led to such different systems of Care policy. It was a very, very
rich subject and continues to challenge me to this day.