Urban planning student Emma Knobloch has been selected to appear on a downtown banner in recognition of her outstanding research and scholarship. The university’s Dare to Discover campaign features students who are selected from disciplines across campus and all degree levels.
Emma’s research has covered disaster recovery, women’s contributions to climate solutions, the effectiveness of policies to expand STEM participation, and she is currently contributing to the development of an arts and culture plan for the City of Burlington, IA. Additionally, she’s involved with the community engagement superfund, working in coordination with Professor Shannon Watkins in the College of Public Health.
All of Emma’s degrees, a bachelor’s in math and computer science and soon-to-be master’s in urban and regional planning, have led to her interdisciplinary work focused on problem solving and solutions, whether by using tools such as computer programming or best practices in sustainability planning in research. An additional influence on her perspective was completing the liberal studies core curriculum as an undergraduate at New York University which is taught through a global and interdisciplinary lens. This provided her with a dynamic intersectional approach towards knowledge and research.
Her degrees also include innovation and questioning boundaries. The planning degree has added the dimension of government and its role in improving the welfare of the whole community. One of her passions is utilizing numbers, which tell an objective truth. However, numbers can’t tell the whole story so this is where she likes to add in the social science methods to get the fuller picture.
Emma says, “The faculty, staff and my peers in the School of Planning and Public Affairs have fostered internal community building. This school stands out to me as a leader in creating community in academia that belongs to everyone. My personal philosophy of community is that the whole is great than the sum of its parts and this school embodies that.”