Cost-effective Deep Learning courses through the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program are designed for smart, busy professionals with limited training budgets. We provide you with high-quality, practical courses designed and led by expert practitioners. Our courses are interactive and international, so you can share ideas and ask questions of a wide variety of practitioners.

Starting March 9, BOCEP offers five Deep Learning courses:

Introduction to Environmental Planning (March 9 to April 16) helps you learn the critical skills needed to engage in sustainable planning and community development. This will be a seminar style course encouraging interaction and shared knowledge among participants in identifying planning measures that are appropriate to address the relationships between and among land uses and ecological systems. The course will begin with an introduction to how the environment works and how to find and use environmental data. Participants will choose an issue regarding air, water, land or other environmental impacts and examine how planning solutions mitigate or merely shift these impacts. Learners will explore policies on sustainability, climate change and other topics of interest to course members. Instructor: Bob Kull, AICP/PP, Principal, Planygy Inc.

Introduction to New Urbanism (March 9 to April 16) helps you develop a deeper understanding of this popular and influential field of planning. This course will offer a mixture of resources, tools, knowledge, and skills students can apply to their professional office work, such as: urban design principles, standards and guidelines; web-based resources; urban design analysis; placemaking and defensible space design approaches; and New Urbanist design applications. Instructor: Leland Edgecombe, AICP, AIA, CNU, Principal, The Edgecombe Group.

Planning to take the New Jersey Professional Planner exam? Want to build your practice in the state, and need a refresher on current land use laws? New Jersey Planning Law (March 16 to April 23), can help. New Jersey Planning Law is a comprehensive look at the major bodies of statutory law that affect land development in the Garden State. Originally developed as support for candidates for the New Jersey Professional Planner examination, it is equally valuable as a refresher for journey level practitioners, for Planning Commissioners and Board of Appeals members seeking a broader planning context in which to review applications, or for citizens with an interest in development issues. In addition to "telling the planning story" through our look at law and regulation, we will look "behind the law" at how planning actually works in practice, primarily through case studies and class discussion. Instructor: Paul Gleitz, PP, Principal Planner, Heyer, Gruel & Associates.

Building Sustainable Creative Economies (March 16 to April 23) focuses on economic development through the arts. Learners will get knowledge and skills that can help them make better decisions about building local creative economies and convincing officials and investors. Learners will get a better understanding of the connections between the arts and local economies, learn about successful initiatives, and develop skills for analyzing local creative economies from both the industry and consumer perspective. Instructor: Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP, Director, Arts Build Communities.

BOCEP Deep Learning courses provide a graduate-level education at less than half the cost of going to a weekend workshop. All Deep Learning courses can help you earn a Bloustein Professional Certificate and most are eligible for 14 AICP Certification Maintenance credits.

Each course is $295, and scholarships of up to $145 are available for most courses. For those seeking a Bloustein Professional Certificate, there is an additional $50 fee per course. To get more information on available scholarships, please contact the Professional Development Institute or sign up for the PDI newsletter.

To learn more about any of these courses or the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program, please visit http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/bocep (Sign up for our newsletter to get scholarships of up to $145 on some classes.) Questions? Feel free to contact the program director, Leonardo Vazquez, at [email protected] or 732-932-3822, x711

BOCEP is produced by the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The Bloustein School is one of the leading centers of research and learning in urban planning in the United States.