Nguyen-Hoang wins Curriculum Innovation Award

Body

Phuong Nguyen-Hoang was selected as one of three winners of the Curriculum Innovation Award, sponsored by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The award honors excellence in teaching and design of learning experiences that are accessible, engaging, and effective for all students, and includes a $10,000 prize for each winner. 

Nguyen-Hoang’s course, Financing Local Government, was submitted for consideration. The graduate-level course is offered in the spring semester in the UI School of Urban and Regional Planning, which he began teaching in 2011. The overall goal of the course is to help students possess knowledge and skills in local budgeting processes, mechanics of various revenue sources for local governments, and especially the connection between these revenue sources and land use as well as other fields of planning.

Nguyen-Hoang’s application was supported by three letters of support from Charles Connerly, DEO of the UI School of Urban and Regional Planning, and two students. From Connerly’s letter, 

“Since taking over the Financing Local Government class in 2011 Phuong has done an excellent job of developing a class that is rigorous, that builds on Phuong’s substantial knowledge of state and local public finance (including his own rapidly growing body of articles), that demonstrates the close ties between public finance and urban planning, and that goes beyond the textbook approach to public finance and engages students by encouraging them to connect state and local public finance issues they see in the news with the public finance literature.

Phuong employs a teaching style that emphasizes interaction between the instructor and the students and among students working in small groups. This is a style that Phuong has perfected in the various classes that he teaches.”

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has four areas of focus in its Mission: Land Value Capture and Property Tax, Municipal Fiscal Health, Informality and Urban Poverty, and Climate Change. The former two focus areas are covered in depth in Financing Local Government. Select units of the course and its innovative elements will be highlighted on the Lincoln Institute's online course platform.