FAICP in Michigan

Rodney (Rod) Arroyo, FAICP

As a lifelong learner and enthusiastic advocate for people and places, Rod Arroyo has sought to innovate and advance the way planners approach community planning. His work transformed zoning codes to be user friendly and accessible, and his plans resulted in the creation of better places and boosted economic growth. Rod’s innovative educational efforts led to advancement of the profession through graduate coursework, sharing best practices, and offering hands-on learning opportunities. 

Katherine Ford Beebe, PhD, FAICP 

Katherine Ford Beebe is a strategic planner with a deep belief that rebuilding our urban centers requires the partnership of civic leaders, property-owners, and investors. While working in some of the most challenging communities of Detroit, she coordinates diverse collaborative teams, translates visions into plans, and then works toward implementation.

M. Rory Bolger, PhD, FAICP

Well before Dr. Bolger began his 33-year career as a planner, his work as a Peace Corps/Panama volunteer and years with CDCs in Detroit launched him on a trajectory of public service.  His ability to craft land use regulation and explain the nuts and bolts of zoning (in two languages) have helped empower community voices and strike a responsible balance between spirited entrepreneurs and under-resourced neighborhoods. Skilled at hearing sometimes-complementary, sometimes-conflicting argument, Rory is effective at distilling it into understandable prose and reducing that to enforceable legislation. He has authored/edited the majority of Detroit’s zoning text amendments since 1986.

Richard K. Carlisle, FAICP

Having served hundreds of Michigan communities as a planning consultant for forty years, Dick was the guiding influence in the merger of the Michigan Association of Planning and the Michigan Society of Planning Officials, resulting in one of the largest chapters in the country.  Dick has served as Michigan’s leader in advocating for both the profession and local government, speaking for legislation reform and against dilution of local control.  Dick realizes that community building extends beyond the profession as a strong advocate for people with disabilities by forming support organizations and leading Michigan’s campaign to expand the Best Buddies program. 

Lillian Dean, FAICP

Lillian Dean has made notable contributions to planning and environmental management in Michigan. She facilitates interjurisdictional coordination and meaningful action with practical administrative tools, teamwork, and effective public involvement. Areas of significant achievement include groundwater protection strategies, stormwater management, farmland preservation, recycling, composting and environmental landscape demonstration projects.

Trudy Galla, FAICP

Trudy Galla served in the Planning & Community Development department in Leelanau County for 35 years; 26 years as its Director.  Her contributions include leading a citizen driven Leelanau General Plan, successfully advocating for state legislation passed to allow a ‘flat fee’ per household for recycling and waste reduction programs, and cleaning up and redeveloping contaminated sites. 

Carl Goldschmidt, PhD, FAICP

1927-2015

Dr. Goldschmidt joined the faculty at Michigan State University in 1956, and was an integral part of the College of Social Science. In 1973, he was appointed director of the School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture. While at Michigan State, he was awarded Fulbright Scholarships in Tel Aviv, Israel and in Dortmund, Germany. The Carl Goldschmidt International Studies Fund was established for Urban Planning students at Michigan State.

For over 40 years, Carl led efforts to improve the profession and the teaching of planning. He helped to create both the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), and the Planning Accreditation Board (PAB), and for years was active in the accomplishments of both.

Mary Ann Heidemann, PhD, FAICP

Dr. Mary Ann Heidemann practiced planning in Michigan and throughout the Midwest, leading environmental, cultural and economic resource units in local, regional, and state government. Her multidisciplinary consulting firm helped small communities in underserved areas include environmental stewardship and sustainable thinking in local plans and ordinances. Heidemann co-authored and instructed in Michigan’s Citizen Planner program, teaching thousands of local officials the fundamentals of planning and zoning. As advocate and fundraiser, Mary Ann successfully championed significant historic, economic, park, and infrastructure projects. As inspiring educator and effective administrator, she mentored many young professionals to choose planning careers and attain AICP status. 

Edward Hustoles, FAICP

1926 - 2022

Edward J. Hustoles' 50 year Government and Consulting Planning work ranges from Project and Master Plans, to major Regional Air and Water Quality Studies impacting International boundaries.  He initiated Mobile Workshops at our National Conventions. His passions are his family, and spreading the Planning gospel from Garden Clubs to Universities.  

John Iacoangeli, FAICP

John Iacoangeli’s planning career can be summed up in two words: transformational and transferable.  As a hands-on planner, he recognizes the importance of community inclusion, using the opportunity to educate participants on the value of planning with an eye toward achievable results and preparing them to transform their community. His work has focused on rural and urban municipalities of the Central Great Lakes Region, transferring his knowledge to younger planning professionals, planning commissions, and elected officials to shape planning outcomes across the region.  John has also served his home community as mayor, councilmember, and board member on several commissions.

Zenia Kotval, PhD, FAICP

Zenia Kotval has dedicated her career to fostering learning and advancing community and economic development. While at Michigan State University, she developed the planning program’s capstone service-learning course, resulting in student projects for communities across Michigan. She has mentored countless graduate and doctoral students through graduation and beyond. As an international scholar, she cultivates knowledge by developing courses in eastern-European universities. A prolific writer and collaborator, she has published over 100 works and delivered professional planning studies to communities along the U.S. eastern seaboard, Portugal, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She is also an active member of PAB and ACSP.

 Robert Marans, PhD, FAICP

Dr. Robert W. Marans has spent his career bringing high-quality quantitative social science research to the field of planning and public policy. As a premier senior researcher for 45 years at The University of Michigan, he has gained an international reputation for the quality and innovations evident in his contributions. He has co-authored seven notable books, many of them dealing with quality-of-life and the contributions of physical planning and urban design to quality of life. He is an internationally recognized expert who for decades has been making presentations at venues in the United States and around the world.

J. Douglas Piggott, FAICP

1957-2023

Doug Piggott’s career exemplifies his commitment to serve his profession, his colleagues, and the rural communities of mid-Michigan. He has worked for 40 years to provide citizens and professionals the tools to develop a unifying vision for their communities and the path to achieve it. He has demonstrated that planning can serve as a tool to bring residents together in a culture of mutual respect.

Gloria W. Robinson, FAICP

Gloria W. Robinson has excelled from the community to the federal level in a career built on the belief that the planning profession could transform communities and thereby transform lives. Communities and people throughout Michigan and across the nation, live better lives as a result of her transforming efforts. 

Kurt Schindler, FAICP

Kurt Schindler is from rural Northern Michigan, where he served as Planning Director in Manistee County, then Land Use Educator for MSU Extension.  Kurt is known for groundbreaking work in economic development, form-based zoning, placemaking, ground and surface water protection, practitioner training, and co-authoring MSU Extension’s Citizen Planner and Zoning Administrator certificate programs. Schindler was president of APA Michigan’s predecessor board and was awarded Outstanding Professional Planner and Life Membership.

Suzanne Schulz, FAICP

Suzanne Schulz harnessed a major Michigan community’s vision and moved it forward with stunning results. She is an implementer who sees urban systems as opportunities to be leveraged. Her planning processes engage and empower stakeholders to become passionate changemakers. Suzanne’s innovative work in Grand Rapids, Michigan, includes eliminating single-family zone districts to increase housing types and price points, creating unique citizen participation strategies, and writing integrative policies and ordinances across disciplines to operationalize plan goals. She is known for valuing the wisdom of community voices, passionately leading with her values, and believing that planning is an essential service.

Russell Soyring, FAICP

Russ Soyring transformed Traverse City, Michigan, a post-industrial town, into one of Michigan’s most thriving, walkable, and equitable communities. He achieved this through leadership, educating elected officials, and engaging residents. Soyring never wavered on his passion for making cities enticing and inclusive places to live. Soyring was never shy to engage student planners and citizens to advance city planning initiatives, be the voice for those with lesser means, advocate for affordable housing opportunities, and encourage compact development to support walking, bicycling, and public transit. His results have resulted in Traverse City being designated "The Strongest Town in America.”

June Thomas, PhD, FAICP

Michigan State University professor June Thomas had made creative contributions to several areas of planning scholarship, including the relationships among racial inequity, social reform and urban planning; the role of city agencies in supporting urban community development; and the connection between spiritual leadership and the planning process.  

James Tischler, FAICP

James Tischler is a planning practitioner who intensely cares about the form, quality, and redevelopment of urban places. He is a national leader in the brownfields, placemaking, urbanism, and land banking movements, aligning them to be a powerful resiliency force. He initiated and encouraged the adoption of form-based codes in Michigan communities and across the nation. His pioneering work merging these disciplines are national case studies, and his leadership in the recovery and establishment of the Frenchtown Settlement/River Raisin National Battlefield was first to align archeology, interpretation, and natural systems in a site reuse context for the National Park System.

Norman Tyler, PhD, FAICP

Norman Tyler has had a life-long commitment to education and community planning. He served for seventeen years as director of the Eastern Michigan University planning program, and is an award-winning educator recognized for development of innovative educational web-based applications. His research has focused on community development, preservation planning, and downtown revitalization. He has authored books on community planning, historic preservation, Greek Revival architecture, the history of transcontinental travel, the Peace Corps, and a biographical family history.  He has assisted in community building throughout his career, including West African villages (1960s), inner-city Baltimore neighborhoods, (1970s), Pennsylvania coal mining towns (1980s), small cities throughout Michigan (1990s), virtual community planning (2000s), and as an community activist in Ann Arbor. 

 Mark A. Wyckoff, FAICP

Mark Wyckoff is a community planner who established and ran the Planning & Zoning Center, Inc., a private sector consulting business for 24 years (1982-2006). In 1982, he created the Michigan-specific monthly magazine, Planning & Zoning News.  Before retiring from Michigan State University in 2018, he served in director roles at the Land Policy Institute and Planning & Zoning Center for 12 years. He has been the longest continually serving member of the Michigan Association of Planning Law Committee and has helped the Michigan legislature consolidate laws related to local planning and zoning and advised on many draft state policies and legislation. He is the author or co-author of nearly two dozen best practices guidebooks, training programs, several books, and journals of law, planning and real estate. He also served as Executive Director of the Michigan Society of Planning Officials.