Five years ago, the Edward J. Bloustein School took a chance on online education. With no external funding – meaning no upfront money for advertising or to pay instructors – the school in April 2005 launched three small courses for urban planners. Today, the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program is one of the largest programs of its kind at Rutgers University and a leading provider of convenient, high quality continuing education for urban planners and related professionals.
The program, often called by its acronym BOCEP, has served more than a thousand professionals in a wide variety of courses – from one-hour webinars to five-and-a-half week-long “Deep Learning” courses. BOCEP has offered nearly 70 courses in community development, cultural planning economic development, land use law, leadership, professional practice, sustainable development and urban design. It is one of the few online continuing education programs for urban planners and perhaps the only one offering extended courses in land use law and urban design.
Based in the Bloustein School at Rutgers in New Brunswick, NJ, BOCEP is an international program. Learners come from around the United States and the world. Less than a third of BOCEP learners are based in New Jersey; a significant number are in New York, California and Florida. There have also been learners from Argentina, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, Poland, Somalia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. Two American service personnel based in Iraq have also taken BOCEP courses.
Courses are taught by experienced professionals throughout the United States. BOCEP Deep Learning courses get between 150 and 200 registrations per year. Hundreds more attend BOCEP Learning Labs – the program’s term for webinars.
Originally named Bloustein Online Continuing Education for Planners, BOCEP has expanded its programming to serve other professionals such as civil engineers and architects, as well as “citizen planners” – anyone who works to help improve quality of life in their communities.
For many busy professionals and citizen planners, good continuing education can be expensive, inconvenient or too far away. That’s why BOCEP works to make affordable, high quality (the Deep Learning courses are taught at a graduate level) and convenient.
BOCEP Deep Learning courses cost much less than comparable online courses and are half or even a third the price of classroom workshops. There are no required face-to-face meetings in BOCEP courses. Learners can complete their courses from almost any computer with an Internet connection. While BOCEP Learning Labs are live, Deep Learning courses are asynchronous. This means that learners can participate at their convenience.
And because professionals say they like to learn by solving problems and engaging with one another, all BOCEP courses encourage conversation among participants, and several work on real projects with real clients. In past and upcoming courses, the projects include: An urban design plan in Virginia; a project to help downtown Somerville, NJ become an arts destination; and an arts-based community development plan in Arizona. In other courses, learners can work on plans or projects that they can put in place in their communities.
BOCEP courses get high marks from learners. In course evaluations, the vast majority of learners say that they learned a lot in their courses and what they learned will help them in their jobs and careers.
BOCEP was created by Leonardo Vazquez and Donald Krueckeberg, then an Associate Dean at the Bloustein School. (Dr. Krueckeberg passed away in 2006.) Vazquez is an urban planner and management consultant who was the Manager of Online Communications at The New School, when he joined the Bloustein faculty in 2004. In between teaching courses in planning history and practice, he surveyed planners about what they wanted to learn and how, and developed the template for BOCEP Deep Learning courses. Through BOCEP, Vazquez was able to pursue another mission – increase ethnic and cultural diversity in the planning profession. In a field where more knowledge leads to more career success, BOCEP creates opportunities for disadvantaged professionals to build their skills.
“BOCEP is not about teaching what we think they should know,” Vazquez said. “It is about helping professionals and citizen planners learn what they need to help them do good and be better.”
For more information on the BOCEP program, please contact
Professional Development Institute Director Leonardo Vazquez
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