The Cornell community and the Baker Program in Real Estate are pleased to welcome Assistant Professor Suzanne Charles this Fall semester. Charles and her family come from Boston, Massachusetts, where she was an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University and taught courses in housing design and real estate finance. She brings with her over twenty years of experience in architecture and real estate.
At Northeastern, Professor Charles thought that she had found the perfect situation for her and her family, but fortunately for the Cornell community, she found the opportunity to be part of the City and Regional Planning (CRP) Department and the Baker Program in Real Estate too enticing to resist, and was able to convince her husband that Ithaca was the perfect place to live and raise their family.
In addition to her position at Northeastern University, Professor Charles has made stops in Denver, CO, where her entrepreneurial spirit led her to start her own architecture firm; Chicago, IL where she was a principal at the architectural firm Booth Hansen; and Cambridge, MA, where she earned her doctorate degree in urban planning from Harvard University. Professor Charles also served as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan where the Urban Land Institute case competition team that she led made the finals in 2012.
Professor Charles hopes that her design experience and passion for teaching will help students understand how good design creates spaces that people want to be in and the value that a good design team can add to a project. “Buildings, and the process of designing them, are so much more complicated than they once were… but it is essential that students understand the basic forms that buildings take and that design can add value to real estate,” states Charles.
This semester Professor Charles is teaching CRP 5560, Creating the Built Environment, a required class for all second year students in the Baker Program. In class, her passion for design and teaching is self-evident and she challenges students to think deeply about the built environment – the benefits of which will make CRP and the Baker Program stronger in the years to come!
