Contents:
A. If you are considering working with me on an option paper
B. If you want me to write a letter of reference in your behalf
C. Guidelines for my review of your draft written work
D. If we are writing together.
E. Career development resources.
F. FAQs
G. Academic Dishonesty.

Ideas for Option Paper or Thesis topics I am interested in advising:

• State environmental land acquisition:  getting the most for our investment. (or same approach to right-of-way acquisition.)
• Local development review approval: how can planners bargain effectively? [especially comparative work involving the UK and/or the US]
  
• Planning permissions in comparative perspective: studies of development approval in the U.S. and abroad.
  
• Coordinating environmental permits: can agencies work together?
• Dark side of the Sunshine: do freedom of information laws restrict government effectiveness?
• Professional work in an era of collaboration: how planners have changed in response to the communicative model.

In general I find that it takes about eight months of 1/4 time work to bring an option paper to completion.  Given this, if you wish to graduate in May, I suggest we begin talking in September (or January for August; or May for December).  The key milestones I ask for (and suggested completion dates for May graduation) are:

• 2-3 page idea paper (problem definition; sketch of what you will do) [1 October]
• Prospectus (10-20 pages: problem definition, literature review, research design) [31 December]
• Completion of Data Collection [15 February]
• First Draft of Option Paper [1 March]
• Second Draft of Option Paper [1 April]
• Oral Defense [20 April]
• Submission of Final Copy [25 April].

B. If you want me to write a letter of reference in your behalf:

Please provide me with a current copy of your resume as well as a copy of your application materials to the program/job in question.  If there are program description materials (job ad?), it would be best if you give me a copy of these as well.  Ideally, I'd like to have this material two weeks in advance of the deadline, but 72 hours will do IF I am in town and either you are willing to pay the FedEx charges or the organization will accept electronic submissions.

C. Guidelines for my review of your draft written work:

Please give me clean, clear draft materials marked with your name and the date of the material.  

In general, expect that I will need 10 days to two weeks to review any detailed document.  FSU's standard practice requires four weeks for review of a full dissertation draft.  If you will need shorter turnaround, please schedule the review time with me at least a week in advance.  If the document in question is brief, say under five pages, I can certainly react faster, but I must ask for at least 72 hours on all review requests.  If I am out of town, obviously, that may not be enough time.

Please do not e-mail large documents (over 5 mB), or documents requiring specialized software to read, without alerting me appropriately in the cover message. 

Please follow University of Chicago style.  This is the style used in JPER and JPL and is the style described in Kate Turabian's Manual for Writers (Univesity of Chicago Press). Note that this is not the American Psychological Assn style which has been adopted for coursework by the Dept of Urban and Regional Planning at FSU.  Use citation style rather than footnotes for simple references.

Please do not intersperse tables and figures with text in the document. Instead, place all graphics at the end of the document (numbered and titled).  If a graphic is complex, please save it as an image file separate from the main document: most publishers will require this.   I much prefer to work in Corel Word Perfect, rather than MS Word.