Akers, Mary Anne Alabanza
Mary Anne Alabanza Akers
Dr. Mary Anne Alabanza Akers is an urban planning expert and steadfast advocate for underrepresented minority students. She has over forty years of leadership experience in higher education. As Cal Poly Pomona Dean of the College of Environmental Design, Dr. Alabanza Akers continues her steadfast commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in higher education. Her research interests include Urban Sustainability and Resiliency, Community Design, Design and Human Behavior, and Community-based Economic Development.
Alabanza Akers, M.A. 2022. Urban Environments and Health in the Philippines: A Retrospective on Women Street Vendors and Their Spaces. Routledge.
Determan, J., Alabanza Akers, M.A., Williams, I., Hohmann, C., Dunlop-Martin, C. January 2015. Learning space design for the future ethnically diverse American classroom. [Conference Presentation]. American Institute of Architecture, Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
Alabanza Akers, M.A. October, 2013. Urban Streets Struggling to Survive: An Urban Design Solution, [Conference Presentation] International Conference on Sustainable Cities, Urban Sustainability, and Transportation. Baltimore, Maryland.
Alabanza Akers, M.A., Voos, P., Green, D. 2012. Heritage Tourism Development Plan for the Preston/Poplar Neck of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway. Caroline County Office of Tourism, Maryland.
Alabanza Akers, M.A., Van Geest, J., Loubert, L., Wong, S., Kamal, A., Perry, M. 2008. The Impact of the Baltimore Housing Resource Center: Report to the City of Baltimore Mayor’s Office.
Dr. Alabanza Akers’s family’s background and careers profoundly influenced her early life in the Philippines. Her father was the city architect for Baguio and was instrumental in establishing the first architecture program north of Manila. Growing up, she spent significant time in her father’s office, where he worked and taught architecture classes in the evenings. Dr. Alabanza Akers and her siblings often found themselves at the back of his classroom or studio, armed with paper and pencils, sketching away while he delivered lectures on architecture. This unique upbringing provided her with an early immersion in the world of architecture.
As a young girl, Dr. Alabanza Akers initially thought she wanted to be an architect like her father. However, she also drew inspiration from her mother, a social worker and psychologist. Her perspective evolved as she observed her mother’s work and delved into the study of people and their interactions with the built environment. Her mother’s career opened her eyes to the multifaceted aspects of human behavior, society, and the built environment’s impact, eventually shaping her career trajectory.
Dr. Alabanza Akers describes her evolution into an environmental professional as gradual but says that the natural world has always played a prominent role in her personal and professional life. She says growing up in a mountain community in the Philippines “somehow strengthened [her] connection with nature and the environment” (2016).
Dr. Alabanza Akers earned her undergraduate degree in sociology from the University of the Philippines, where she also taught and did research on indigenous farming cultures. She also earned a Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of the Philippines. After working for several years in the Philippines, she moved to the United States, following her father’s footsteps and attending Michigan State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Science – Urban Planning and Community Organization in 1991. Despite plans to return to the Philippines to work, Dr. Albanza Akers stayed in the U.S. She also completed a Master of Science in Professional and Creative Writing from Towson University.
In 1979, after completing her undergraduate degree, Dr. Albanza Akers began teaching at several universities in the Phillippines. She also worked for the Philippine National Housing Authority, researching slums and slum improvement, before becoming a community planner in a Philippine mining community. There, she explored sustainable solutions for a community whose economic base was depleted. “The environmental aspect came in because there was no gold left, and the mines were shutting down,” she explains. “I had to develop sustainable plans to ensure that the community survived. So, with the people, we developed plans for creating compact communities in the mountains, utilizing indigenous house construction methods using local material. (2016).” The project rekindled Dr. Alabanza’s interest in urban planning, and she decided to pursue her Ph.D. in urban planning at Michigan State University, where her father had studied.
While in graduate school, she worked as a Project Assistant with Michigan State’s Center for Urban Affairs. She was also the Executive Director of the Michigan Community Economic Development Corporation, where she examined issues of grassroots economic development in creating economically sustainable communities.
After completing her Ph.D. in 1991, Dr. Albanza Akers began as a dedicated educator in urban planning at the University of Georgia. During her tenure, she was a pivotal liaison between the University of Georgia’s Institute of Community and Area Development and the renowned Atlanta Project initiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Dr. Alabanza’s responsibilities at the University of Georgia extended to her role as a full-time instructor, where she expertly crafted and taught courses such as Planning and Design, City Planning, and Ideas of Community.
Dr. Albanza Akers worked at the University of Georgia until 2007, when she achieved a significant milestone in her career by being named the Founding Dean of Morgan State University’s School of Architecture and Planning, a distinguished public historically Black research university and Maryland’s largest institution Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Notably, she also supervised numerous senior projects and graduate theses, affirming her commitment to fostering the growth of future leaders in the field. In 2007, she was named to the Who’s Who in the Asian American Community in Southeastern United States list.
Dr. Alabanza Akers enthusiastically believes that her current vocation, involving teaching and direct community engagement, represents the pinnacle of her professional journey. She takes immense pride in her extensive track record of collaborating with diverse communities on various issues. She explains, “Throughout my life, I have been deeply engaged with diversity. From my early experiences in the Philippines, where I worked closely with underserved communities and ethnic minorities, to my time in Michigan, where I predominantly collaborated with African-American communities” (2016). She is widely recognized for her contributions through writing and service-learning projects aimed at providing technical assistance to economically disadvantaged groups.
In 2013, she received the American Society of Landscape Architects Maryland Chapter Planning Award and, in 2015, the Distinguished Alumni Award in Community Service and Educational Administration.
Although her educational background is in Sociology and Urban Planning, Dr. Alabanza Akers always tried to connect issues she encountered in those disciplines to the environment. “Even when I was teaching Sociology, I was already linking the natural environment to people,” she says. “I would take my students on four-day-long trips to rural areas to live with farmers and get first-hand experience with how it is to live close to the land” (2016). As a professor in environmental design, Dr. Alabanza Akers merges her interests in the natural and social worlds to develop a holistic concept of true sustainability.
In a landmark moment in April 2022, Dr. Alabanza Akers assumed the role of Dean of the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona. With this appointment, Dr. Alabanza Akers is the first Filipino-American to lead the College of Environmental Design. This achievement speaks to her remarkable contributions to her field.
As Dean, she emphasizes the importance of expanding her efforts in the realm of sustainability, particularly in addressing the pressing issue of climate change. She firmly believes that tackling climate change and sustainability requires a multidisciplinary approach. It’s not solely about architecture and necessitates the collaboration of engineers and behavioral scientists. While advanced technology plays a pivotal role, its effectiveness is contingent on people’s knowledge of how to utilize it and their ability to collaborate effectively.
Dr. Alabanza Akers’s research interests span a broad spectrum, encompassing urban sustainability and resiliency, community design, design and human behavior, and community-based economic development. In 2022, she published her first book, Urban Environments and Health in the Philippines: A Retrospective on Women Street Vendors and Their Spaces.
Dr. Alabanza Akers benefited from the guidance of several mentors throughout her career, foremost among them her father, a designer and urban planner. “He was one of the first people to ‘think outside the box’ in terms of design in the Philippines, and he was very sustainable in his designs,” Dr. Alabanaza Akers says (2016). “That was a big influence on me.” She also credits her boss at the mining company, Mr. Amado Lagdameo, who showed her many “sustainable, indigenous practices that should be applied to comprehensive development” (2016). Dr. Rex Lamore at Michigan State also helped her “discover and understand what grassroots economic development really is” (2016).
Dr. Alabanza Akers says mentoring is now one of the most rewarding aspects of her position; however, she notes that she has not had many opportunities to mentor minority students, as there are very few in Landscape Architecture.
Dr. Alabanza Akers encourages minority students interested in environmental careers to take a holistic approach to the environmental field and integrate the needs of diverse peoples and communities into their work. “Build as much of a knowledge base about ‘the environment’ as you can,” she advises (2016). “But at the same time, working in the environmental field, you also need to be aware of people’s relationships with the environment …not just their consumption needs, but their health, spiritual, and cultural connections with natural and built environments. It is similarly important to consider these things within the context of sustainable economic development” (2016).
CalPolyPomona. 2023. Mary Anne Alabanza Akers. https://experts.cpp.edu/member/mary-anne-akers/
Guimapang, Katherine. 2023, March 27. ‘Leadership Is Not Linear’: A Conversation with Mary Anne Alabanza Akers, the New Dean of Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Environmental Design. https://archinect.com/features/article/150328022/leadership-is-not-linea…
Interview conducted by Multicultural Environmental Leadership Development Initiative staff. 2016. University of Michigan – School of Natural Resources and Environment. Ann Arbor, MI.