April 1 alumni panel - Urban Studies

Three former Urban Studies concentrators will return to Brown to discuss how Urban Studies shaped and continues to shape their professional experiences. Panelists: Brian Bixby Esq (’74), Darrell Petit (’82), Matt Soursourian (’08).
 
From Brian Bixby:
“When I graduated from Brown in 1974, I was one of the first concentrators in Urban Studies.  It was not yet a Department, so my major was an independent study, and I also wrote an honors thesis on The Interrelationship Between Organized Crime, Machine Politics, and Urban Poverty.  I then went onto law school, in part because it interested me and in part to stay out of the Vietnam War, since I had a high draft number.  I am an attorney and chair the Private Client Group of Burns & Levinson LLP, based in Boston and Providence.”
 
About Darrell Petit:
“A native of Montreal, Petit earned a bachelor’s degree in urban planning from Brown University, studied at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York and earned a master’s of art and sculpture from the University of Iowa.
 
‘A formative event was seeing the opening of the Isamu Noguchi Museum in New York,’ he recalls. The impact of that artist’s work led him to Berlin, where he worked for an American sculptor while making his ‘first effort at shaping granite to make expressive form’ at a Germany academy of art.
 
Petit recently constructed the base for the Torosaurus sculpture at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven. He’s currently creating an urban park in Scarsdale, N.Y., making a new piece for an exhibition in Tokyo, preparing for a temporary installation at a December art fair in Miami and consulting on two lower Manhattan projects.”
 
Singer, Karen. “Taking Something for Granite.” Contact.com. 4 September 2006. 24 February 2009.
<http://www.conntact.com/article_page.lasso?id=40236>

Darrell Petit just returned from India after having participated in the International Festival for Sacred Art Delhi.

 
From Matthew Soursourian:
“I chose to concentrate in Urban Studies because I wanted a major that would allow interdisciplinary learning combining public policy, political science, and ethnic studies, all focused on the intersection of these fields inside the laboratory of cities. Within the Urban Studies program, I enjoyed small seminars and close relationships with my professors. Some of the most rewarding courses were "Housing and Homelessness" with Professor Silver, "Urban Regimes" with Professor Orr, and "American Culture and the City" with Professor Morone. I started interning at Providence City Hall junior year, first for the Mayor's Advance Team and then in the Office of Policy and Legislative Affairs. While interning (and then working part-time) for the Chief of Policy, I wrote "Greenprint: Providence," a comprehensive report on the City's sustainability agenda. I ended up staying in Providence after graduation and working full-time for the City. I continue to focus on environmental sustainability, as well as mass transit issues and poverty reduction strategies.”