CRP Welcomes Katherine Lieberknecht and Gian-Claudia Sciara

September 23, 2016
Both educators bring a wealth of experience to the school, with extensive backgrounds in planning, economic development, and environmental sustainability.
LIeberkecht and Ciara

Katherine Lieberknecht and Gian-Claudia Sciara join the Community and Regional Planning program this fall. Both educators bring a wealth of experience to the school, with extensive backgrounds in planning, economic development, and environmental sustainability.

Dr. Lieberknecht, previously a lecturer in the CRP program, served as principal investigator of the Texas CityLab program for the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 program years. She is also a fellow with the school’s Center for Sustainable Development. Her research areas include urban water resources planning, metropolitan-scaled green infrastructure planning, and food-energy-water systems of metropolitan areas.

For the fall 2016 semester, Lieberknecht is teaching a course on urban agriculture systems. In future semesters, she will teach courses on water resources planning and urban ecology at the School of Architecture, as well as an undergraduate environmental sciences course associated with UT Austin's Environmental Science Institute. She also has taught courses on land conservation, non-profit management, and property rights. Lieberknecht has published academic articles in the Journal of the American Planning Association, the Journal of Hydrology, and the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, as well as published numerous professional reports focused on land conservation, sustainable economic development, and neighborhood sustainability planning. Prior to joining the UT Austin faculty, she worked as a planner in private practice in Oregon and as a staff member at the Finger Lakes Land Trust in upstate New York. She received her Bachelor of Science in Biology from the College of William and Mary, a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University.

Dr. Sciara joins the school as an Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning. Her expertise lies in transportation planning, policy, and finance, and her research examines how planning and policy decisions for urban transportation, land use, and environmental sustainability are affected by institutional context. Sciara is particularly interested in metropolitan governance, as regions are simultaneously celebrated as hubs of economic growth, creativity, and innovation, and seriously tested by infrastructure needs, growth, and climate impacts.

Prior to joining the UTSOA, Sciara served as a researcher and lecturer at the University of California-Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, and as visiting lecturer at Rutgers University and the City College of New York, working with students from highly diverse backgrounds. Her courses have covered transportation planning and policy, transportation sustainability, bicycle and pedestrian planning, and research methods. Before earning a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, Sciara worked as a senior professional, in environmental policy groups and government and private sector planning organizations in New York and California.  She earned a Master’s in Urban Planning at UCLA and a B.A. from Columbia University, is an AICP-certified planner (American Institute of Certified Planners) and is an active member of the Transportation Research Board.