As Jack Dangermond, President of Esri, says "GeoDesign is a vision for using geographic knowledge to actively and thoughtfully design." Because I have family living all over the world, I was fortunate at a young age to gain a good amount of travel experience. Through my travel, I was able to gain a broader vantage point as to the importance of the built environment in various cities around the world. However, my home here in Los Angeles showed me the importance of integrating spatial information into good city planning.
I feel very fortunate to have discovered this major after transferring from the University of Denver into the Urban Planning major in the Price School. During my first semester here at USC, I happened to take The Water Planet GE course because of my particular interest in hydrology. There I met director of SSI, Professor John Wilson, and Professor Daniel Warshawsky. I quickly became fascinated by this new area of study, and I changed my major to GeoDesign in order to take advantage of this interesting opportunity. What is particularly appealing to me about the GeoDesign major is that it is interdisciplinary, affording me to the opportunity to not simply get an education in one field but to study three unique fields that are intertwined, each of which can be useful in any of the career paths that I wish to pursue.
