CRP Student Receives Prestigious Eisenhower Graduate Fellowship

Louis Alcorn, a dual degree Masters Student in Community & Regional Planning (CRP) and Transportation Engineering, was recently awarded the US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) prestigious Eisenhower Graduate Fellowship to conduct transportation-related research.

Since it was launched in 1983, the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program has awarded over $50 million in funding for students to pursue master’s or doctoral degrees in transportation-related disciplines.  Alcorn was selected for the fellowship by a panel of prominent transportation professionals from around the country in both the academic and public sectors.

The Eisenhower Graduate Fellowship will take Alcorn to the Transportation Research Board’s Annual Meeting, held January 12-16, 2020 in Washington D.C. There, Alcorn will be attending sessions for the FHWA’s selected Eisenhower Fellows, and he will present his MSCRP thesis research as part of the conference’s lectern series. Completed in May 2019, Alcorn’s thesis “Informal Transit Integration with Planning Transit Systems in Lagos, Nigeria” examines the integration and relationships between informal and formal transit services in Lagos, Nigeria. In Summer 2018, Alcorn spent a month in Nigeria collecting primary source materials and conducting interviews for the research, which he hopes to expand through the support of the Eisenhower Fellowship.

Alcorn will also continue his work with Community & Regional Planning Assistant Professor Alex Karner and Professor Kara Kockelman, Alcorn’s advising professor in Engineering, to produce a report for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), “Accessibility Measures in Practice: Guidance for Transportation Agencies,” which will make recommendations for practicing transportation planners analyzing how transportation systems connect people to opportunities.