Dr. Nesse is great at helping students develop the skills, analytical abilities and confidence to make the world a better place for our communities. Her teaching style is very interactive. She uses games, field trips, guests and projects to help students understand the nuances of issues and theories. She also emphasizes clear, concise writing and helps students achieve that using drafts and a lot of feedback. Her primary gift is mentoring students and supporting them as they begin shaping their lives.

Interactive Learning. If you come to Dr. Nesse's classroom you will rarely see her standing in front with a PowerPoint slide show. Even when she is lecturing, she is writing and drawing on the board in order to break down complex ideas. She uses games in teaching because they can 1. introduce concepts in an approachable way, 2. illustrate important dynamics of issues, and 3. help students abstract concrete issues. She taught a capstone urban studies seminar based on games using popular games like Monopoly, issue-specific games like Bay Area Regional Planner, and even one she invented herself. Dr. Nesse finds that students learn more and make connections with other course work more if they play an active role in learning.

Clear, Concise Writing. With her background in public policy, Dr. Nesse appreciates the ability to write about complex topics with clarity and without bias. She sees every class as an opportunity to help students improve their writing but has also taught writing-specific courses.

Mentoring. Dr. Nesse thinks that her most important role as a faculty member is mentoring students. Her approach is to be supportive of their decision-making process. She will help students talk through academic and career options and bring resources that she has such as university offices that specialize in specific functions (like study abroad) and her professional connections. Ultimately, students are deciding the course of their life and the mentoring role is to support the process.

Courses Taught.

Introduction to Urban Planning (undergraduate) This course introduces land use planning through the lens of racialized land management practices such as redlining and racially restrictive covenants in Seattle.

Radical Urbanism (undergraduate) This course demonstrates how people change the city outside of the bureaucratic process through Henri Lefebvre's theory of the right to the city. It focuses on organizations in Seattle who are working to change the city.

Urban Public Policy (undergraduate) Students in this course explore a current public policy (it changes each year) through the lens of public choice theory. There is a strong emphasis on memo writing.

Introduction to GIS (undergraduate) An introduction to ESRI's ArcGIS software package and basic cartographic concepts.

Urban Studies Capstone (undergraduate) Based on board games, this class brings together the coursework in urban studies.

Urban Planning Seminar (undergraduate) This course introduces students to the profession of planning including ethics, professional practice, and information sources.

Planning Methods (graduate) This is a foundational methods course focusing on methods for population estimation and projection and methods for economic estimation.

Statistics for Planners (graduate) This introductory statistics course taught descriptive and inferential statistics in the context of urban and regional issues and used common social science data sets.

State and Local Economic Development Policy (graduate) Students in this course learn about economic development policy and develop a policy proposal for a local jurisdiction.

Housing (graduate) This introduces the basics of income-assisted housing development including the history, major federal funding programs and local actors creating housing.

Learning about issues in our city
Dr. Nesse with some of her students at Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day in Olympia, WA in February 2018.