University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: March 6, 2003

By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor

From east coast to west coast, from city planner to professor, from Swaziland to San Luis Obispo, Kathryn A. Foster consistently has pushed the boundaries of her life and her profession.

More than anything else, Foster—who took over in January as chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture and Planning—sees herself as a teacher and values that role above all others.

Foster

But scholarship also is a crucial facet of her academic life. In addition to her administrative and teaching role in the planning department, Foster serves as director of research at the Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth, which publishes the award-winning "State of the Region Report," an ongoing project that defines and measures regional performance in the Buffalo-Niagara area by developing a series of regional indicators that tracks changes over time, highlights patterns within the region and supports comparisons with other areas. A recent progress report (Winter 2002) on equity in the Buffalo-Niagara Region focuses on such issues as equity in home ownership, distribution of poverty, housing discrimination, interfaith relationships, sexual orientation, perceptions of justice and occupational equity, to name a few.

Foster's research on regionalism, including her latest monograph, "Regionalism on Purpose" (published by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 2001), is well-known in the field, as is her research on governance in general, including work on special-purpose governments, the implications of various metropolitan governance models and lessons from other systems, including, most recently, work on the European Union model of governance.

She is invited to speak frequently governance issues.

But stepping in front of a classroom for the first time—never having thought about teaching until she was approached by the chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo—still resonates as one of those "I remember when" moments for Foster, who was working at the time as a planner for the County of San Luis Obispo.

"I'd never thought about teaching. I made up a course outline and I can remember to this moment what I was wearing that first day in the classroom. It was like an epiphany. I stood there and began teaching 'Introduction to Planning'—'here's my name, here's who I am.' I was young. I didn't have a Ph.D. I was just a lecturer and I remember thinking in a moment, 'this is what I should be doing.' It just felt right," says Foster. She considers herself lucky that she discovered her true passion early and continued to teach part time for the next two years. "I loved it. I thought it was great. And then I thought, 'if I'm going to continue to do this, I need to get credentialed—I need to get a Ph.D.,'" she recalls. "I loved being in school. I'm always trying to recreate for students what it was I loved. I love being around people who are passionate about what they do and it doesn't even have to be my passion. I can see their energy; I can feel it and universities have that," she adds.

Before returning to graduate studies however, Foster felt she needed to see a bit of the world as a means of deciding whether or not to focus on national or international development. She traveled in Asia for a while as a tourist and later decided to join the Peace Corps, hoping for an assignment in that region of the world.

"I wanted to go to Asia. But life doesn't always work out the way you want it and the Peace Corps is driven by the needs of the host countries," she explains. "The Peace Corps tries to fit you into the place and the place I was fit into was Swaziland, which is almost completely surrounded by South Africa. I'm embarrassed to say that as a geography major, when I first got that notice about an opportunity in Swaziland, I had to go to an atlas. I knew it was in Africa, but didn't know exactly where it was," she says.

Swaziland was an entirely new world for her, a place she knew almost nothing about. And, like so many other junctures in her life when she stepped into the unknown, she said 'yes' to Swaziland and worked in the capital in the burgeoning area of urban planning for a little more than two years.

As is the case with many Peace Corps experiences, she says she may have gotten more out of the experience than she was able to give. "I had a tremendous experience. My eyes were opened to new ways of being, to culture and travel before apartheid had ended in South Africa. I was in a country—a black African nation—that was patriarchal and anti-western. I found myself in a culture that I would have never made it in otherwise," says Foster.

When she returned to the U.S. to attend Princeton University where she earned her doctorate from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Foster says she experienced some reverse culture shock—the sheer magnitude of choice offered in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store, for example, seemed astonishing. The Peace Corps experience taught her what she says the planning and urban and regional planning faculty at UB strives to teach its students: that is, to train people to see through different lenses, to see the bigger picture. "It's critical pedagogically to what we do," she believes.

Foster lives within walking distance of the South Campus and expresses a love for Buffalo and the growing awareness and sophistication of its citizen action groups, but believes, as she did when she arrived nine years ago, that the city is still a diamond in the rough.

"It has unrealized potential. I think many people who care about cities and places in general want to realize potential. That's certainly true for planners," she notes. "We want to be able to see an opportunity and grab it. Likewise, we want to catch a vase we see falling off the mantelpiece from across the room—it's all about avoiding crisis and seizing opportunities. I believe that it's possible to make this city a great city. It already has so much going for it, but it's not known as a great city. We haven't quite turned that corner."

But, she adds, most of the major decisions affecting the city now receive much more attention and involvement from community stakeholders than ever before. "It may take longer," Foster says of the decision-making process, "but you get much more buy-in that way. You have people saying they feel like they own it; they're a part of it. People feel better about a place when they can genuinely shape its future. It's not just people making decisions in back rooms. It can't happen that way anymore. People are more sensitive to what's going on."

If she were granted one wish—one thing that would make Buffalo a better place—Foster says it would be to spend scarce dollars fixing the city's education system, since many positive changes would ripple out from that. A crucial decision factor keeping people in or sending them out of cities is the schools, she says.

Foster points out that she is a good example of someone who believes in Buffalo. "I thought I'd stay only three years and it grew on me. Buffalo has amazing jewels, amazing housing and an amazing neighborhood fabric, but we want that for everyone—we want 25 more Elmwood districts."

A high-energy optimist, Foster continues to be invigorated by teaching, by her students and fellow faculty members. "If I could have something on my tombstone and it said 'teacher,' that would feel right," she says. "Teaching lets me take information or knowledge or an idea and just give it away. I think that is the most noble thing.

"Even on my worst day, when things haven't gone right in the classroom or when I have deadlines facing me, I think, 'what else could I do that could possibly bring me even a fraction of this kind of satisfaction.'"