This is the transcript for the video Planning.
Gabriela Quintana (00:02):
Well, welcome to this webinar today. Let’s start. My name is Gabriela and I’m the course director in planning.
Catherine Killen (00:16):
Hi, I’m Catherine Killen. I’m the Head of School of the UTS School of Built Environment. Welcome to UTS. A degree from the UTS School of Built Environment will enable you to have a rewarding career and make a positive impact on society. Our courses prepare you for careers in planning, property development, property investment, project management, and construction. Our courses are internationally accredited. They’re taught by experts with experience and industry connections. We are here to answer your questions about studying at UTS, and we hope to see you here.
Gabriela Quintana (00:57):
So I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, upon whose ancestral lands our city campus now stands. I would also like to pay respect to the Elders, both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land.
Gabriela Quintana (01:18):
So, the planning program. We have three main entry points to planning. The first one is a graduate certificate in planning, then we have the master, and then we have a joint degree between property development and planning. The graduate certificate is only four subjects if you do it full time. The master of planning, you have to take 12 subjects, and the master of property development and planning is comprised by 16 subjects. If you want to enroll in the master of planning, but then you say that you want to leave the program beforehand, there is also the graduate diploma in planning, which is an exit point to this degree.
Gabriela Quintana (02:09):
So what is the background of our degree? What is it that differentiates us from other planning degrees? First of all, we have a comprehensive approach to planning. For us, planning is about understanding the relevance of the context and focusing on the strategic part of what planning is involved. We touch on how to do a DA, a development assessment. We touch on other day-to-day things that you can do in a council, but we want to provide our students with all the skills that you need to be able to develop yourself into any of the different specialties within planning.
Gabriela Quintana (02:54):
So we touch on regional and structural planning. We touch the master planning, urban design. We touch on community engagement and negotiation. We touch on urban economics, and we discussed a little bit also of transport planning. So this degree is to give you those skills for you to build on in your professional life later on.
Gabriela Quintana (03:19):
This degree is focused not just on people who want to broaden their current knowledge in planning, but also for those who want to change careers. So we provide those fundamentals for you to be able to then register as a planner and work in this field. For that, we have a close link with industry. So we have a lot of guest lecturers and guest speakers, and we have a lot of real-life case studies that we bring into our degree, because we collaborate with private practice, with state government, and with local government.
Gabriela Quintana (04:05):
One of the advantages is that we do understand that planning is not isolated in a context. To do urban planning, you need to understand other contextual matters, just as the market and property development, which is why we have this joint degree with these other disciplines.
Gabriela Quintana (04:28):
So if you want key information about our different programs, you can go into our website at UTS, and you can go into the handbook where you can find the course structure, where you can find the admission requirements, which we’re going to touch on. You can see how the different options are, if you want to enroll part-time, if you want to enroll full-time, if you want to start in spring, or if you want to start in autumn.
Gabriela Quintana (05:00):
So, what do you need to be admitted into our programs? If you want to be admitted in a graduate certificate in planning, basically what you need is a bachelor’s degree, and if you don’t have a bachelor’s degree, you can have relevant work experience. Then, if you want to go further and enter into the master of planning, or even start directly the joint degree in property development and planning, you would need to have a bachelor’s degree in one of the related disciplines to planning. Those disciplines range from architecture, urban design, geography, economics, and law. If you don’t have this, you also need to have relevant work experience to be able to be accepted.
Gabriela Quintana (05:55):
Also, you can progress in our masters. So if you start by doing the graduate certificate in planning, or even the graduate diploma or master in property development, then we can validate that. We can recognize that prior learning from that graduate certificate and have you registered into the master program. But you have to have a credit average to be able to join from the graduate certificate or the graduate diploma into the master.
Gabriela Quintana (06:26):
So our degree is accredited by the Planning Institute of Australia. What does that mean and why is it important to be an accredited degree? With this, when you graduate as a planner from the master of planning at UTS, you’re able to enroll into the Planning Institute of Australia as a planner. That will give you more opportunities to work in different areas, not just in local government, which is our usual perspective of what a planner does, but it opens the doors to work at federal government, at state government, regardless if it’s in the Department of Planning and Environment and Industry, or if it’s in the Department of Housing, or in other state entity, and it also opens the door for you to be able to work as a planner in the private industry with any of the planning consultants that we have here in Sydney, so, and that opens that career path.
Gabriela Quintana (07:34):
Through the Planning Institute of Australia, you also can join different networks as the Young Planners Network or Women in New South Wales Network. I mean, there are a lot of advantages of being accredited and being able to register in this institution, and as I was discussing before, about the future career paths, as a planner, graduating from UTS, you can go both into the private sector or into government.
Gabriela Quintana (08:05):
So how is our course structured and what is the experience of studying the master of planning at UTS, or any of the planning degrees? So first of all, our program is taught in blocks. What does that mean? We don’t teach weekly sessions. What we do is gather up all that knowledge into what is usually two blocks of two full days. For example, one subject, that is urban design, is taught Monday and Tuesday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, at the end of April, and then at the end of May, you have once again Monday and Tuesday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
Gabriela Quintana (08:55):
There are other subjects that are a little bit more flexible if you work full-time. For example, we have Group Project A, that is the master of planning subject, that is taught Thursday evenings, 6:00 to 9:00, then all Friday, 9:00 to 6:00, and then all Saturday 9:00 to 6:00, which means that you only have to take one day off from work to be able to participate in this experience, and we have two of those blocks for this subject.
Gabriela Quintana (09:25):
So, what is the advantage of that? The advantage of that is that you can space out the different assignments that you have to submit. It also means that you don’t have to take leave weekly to be able to come to the teaching blocks. It allows you to just take two study days and come to your teaching block, and now that we are in this current situation, definitely, most of our subjects are taught remotely in these blocks, which means that you can watch some of the recorded lectures at your own pace, and then have a meeting with the rest of the class to discuss some topics that may be highlighted by the lecture.
Gabriela Quintana (10:15):
Another important aspect of our course is that we share subjects with other masters and especially with property development. What is the advantage of that? It gives us that multidisciplinary background that we need to have in planning. When we work in the real world, after graduating, we work in multidisciplinary teams. We work with valuers. We work with lawyers. We work with architects, et cetera. We work with a very large diversity of people, and sharing subjects with other masters allows us to give you the skills that you need to work in this multidisciplinary environment.
Gabriela Quintana (11:01):
Another great advantage of this course is all the industry connections that you can make throughout your studies, not just with the guest lecturers and with the guest speakers that we bring from industry, but also with your own classmates. Keep in mind that a lot of the people that study the master work full-time here in Sydney and in other places in Australia. So those are great connections that you can make for your future career.
Gabriela Quintana (11:37):
So, a couple of news that we have now is that the graduate certificate in planning is one of the degrees that was identified as the higher vocation certificate which is the funding that is giving the government now for local students. So that means that if you want to enroll in the graduate certificate, you would only pay $2,500 instead of paying the 12,000 that it would cost.
Gabriela Quintana (12:12):
This is because this grad certificate is taught entirely online this spring session, and you have to take it full-time. So you need to take the four subjects of the graduate certificate in this next session. So you should apply for it if you would like to access this government funding. We still need to assess it. It doesn’t guarantee the access to the degree. However, we want you to know that this funding is there.
Gabriela Quintana (12:47):
Also, for the master of planning, we have CSP places, which are the Commonwealth Supported Places. So, what is that? That is like HECS, but instead for undergrad, those are for postgrad. So, that is about it. These are a couple of sites where you can find a little bit more information about all the postgraduate courses that are taught in the School of Built Environment, as well as the direct link for the online applications.
Gabriela Quintana (13:25):
So I see that there are no questions, but if you want to ask anything that I haven’t mentioned, please let me know. So I received a couple of questions from your enrollments. One of the questions was about if you needed a portfolio to be admitted in the planning program. So for planning, you don’t need to have a design portfolio.
Gabriela Quintana (13:55):
The other question that was made in the enrollments was if you could do the graduate certificate online, and if you could do it partly in the evenings. So with a graduate certificate, now we do have it online, at least for the next spring session, and even with that, you would need to attend some sessions that are scheduled throughout the day. It’s not necessarily not all the subjects have these, but some of the subjects will require for you to attend some sessions at the scheduled times of the blocks.
Gabriela Quintana (14:39):
If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask them now in the Q&A box. So, we have one question, if the grad certificate qualify you to work as a planner. You could definitely find work as a planner in industry. You wouldn’t be able to register in the Planning Institute of Australia because that registration only comes with the master degree, which is the accredited degree. The subjects that you take in the graduate certificate are part of the master, so definitely, these subjects are also recognized, but you have to do the whole master to be able to register there. But definitely, with a graduate certificate, you can find work as a planner in the industry.
Luke Chess (15:55):
Okay. It’s Luke Chess here, the marketing manager for the faculty. Thank you very much, Gabriela, for your time. It does look like we’ve exhausted all of the questions, or question, for today’s session. If there are any further questions, as Gabriela said, you can contact the faculty, and our email address is dab.communication@uts.edu.au. That’s dabcommunication@uts.edu.au. We’re always very happy to answer your questions, to help you to navigate our sometimes friendly, sometimes less friendly website, and to assist in any way we can. I do see there’s one more question there, Gabriela.
Gabriela Quintana (16:44):
Yes. So the timetable, you can find it … Well, there is a timetable address. The easiest way is to Google UTS timetable. In the links that I sent, that you have the handbook of the graduate certificate, the handbook of the master of planning, and the handbook of the master on property development and planning, then you have a look at the subjects that you would enroll and you can see there, year one spring session, if you’re full-time or part-time. You type the subject code into the timetable planner that you’re going to find in Google. Again, if you type UTS timetable, you put the codes there, and there you’re going to find the different subjects. The first subjects start the week of the 27th of July.
Gabriela Quintana (17:41):
If you are a full-time student, you would be taking, in any of those degrees, one subject that is property development process. That subject starts that Thursday. If I’m not mistaken, it would be the 30th of July. So it would be Thursday, the 30th of July, in the evening, 6:00 to 9:00, then all the 31st of July, and then all the 1st of August. That would be the Friday and the Saturday. That would be the first subject that you will take. Then the others, the dates, and the second block of this one vary throughout the rest of the semester. But in that timetabling website, you’re going to be able to find it.
Gabriela Quintana (18:28):
Well, as Luke was saying, you can always contact DAB Communications through the email that he sent, and I think with this, we could end this webinar.
Luke Chess (18:43):
Yes, indeed. I agree, Gabriela. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time and for the information. Thank you very much to the people who’ve attended, and we do very much hope that you’ll continue to be interested in UTS, and we look forward to you studying with us.
Gabriela Quintana (18:59):
Yes, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here to help you. Thank you.