Hazel Ruth Edwards

Background

About Hazel Ruth Edwards

I am a facilitator of knowledge and a champion for designing and planning quality built environments. In my capacity as a tenured faculty member and past department chair, I am always challenged to understand the complex nature of the human environment so that I can convey new theories, practices, trends, and patterns to my students and colleagues. For this reason, I continue to be active in several professional organizations and try to fuel my thirst for knowledge with every possible opportunity. Overall, my unique 30+ year career combines place-based research with planning and urban design practice and teaching. The broad lessons learned from my own academic and professional career in architecture, urban design, and regional planning have been the foundation for perspectives I have brought to over students who came from more than 20 nations around the world. Those lessons learned were woven into innovative educational and mentoring techniques to nurture a new generation of planning and design professionals expressing the built environment in a broad spectrum of cultural values. My primary goal has been to elevate the perspectives of African Americans and women in the design and planning fields, and where possible, to broaden the understanding of the role that these often-underrepresented groups have played in developing our communities. This was the same whether I was working with students in heavily drug impacted neighborhoods of Baltimore, Maryland, with public agencies for domestic violence victims, or multi-ethnic neighborhoods heavily affected by gentrification as well as communities of greater means in Washington, D.C. I am particularly passionate about uncovering and telling the untold stories (histories) of African American places and the people who occupy them. My design background has served as a foundation for my talent for translating and representing ideas and concepts as well as creating alternatives. This orientation has a strong influence in all of my work—from teaching; to campus planning; to master planning activities; to urban transportation studies; to qualitative and quantitative research; to historical research; to pre-development services; to building-related projects; to community engagement; to book design; and to proposal writing. Ultimately, the common thread of my work has been improving livability for all citizens.