Lee Sichter Back at DURP

The Vice President of our Board of Directors has worn many hats over the years and is about to try on a new one.  In the Fall of 2018, he will return to the Department of Urban and Regional Planning as an instructor.

The Vice President of our Board of Directors has worn many hats over the years and is about to try on a new one.  In the Fall of 2018, he will begin teaching Plan 310 – Introduction to Planning at DURP, only the second graduate of DURP to ever return to the Department as an instructor (the first being fellow Board Member and recent Ph.D. recipient, Sara Bolduc).

Lee has worked as a planner in Hawai`i for 39 years.  He received his Master’s degree from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at UH Manoā in 1981, with a focus on land use planning.  He began his career gathering experience in government agencies including the Hawaii Housing Authority, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Department of Business and Economic Development, and the City’s Departments of General Planning and Land Utilization.  In 1985, he landed his ‘dream’ job, serving as the planning advisor to the Chair of the Honolulu City Council, the Honorable Patsy T. Mink.  In 1987, after Mrs. Mink lost her bid to become governor, he moved to the private sector and joined Belt Collins Hawaii, where he spent 23 years, eventually rising to the position of Principal Planner.  In 2013, he left Belt Collins to open his own consulting practice, Lee Sichter LLC.

For the past 10 years, Lee has been a guest lecturer at DURP, presenting the intricacies of Hawai`i’s land use permitting system to Tom Dinell’s Plan 310 – Introduction to Planning, as well as lecturing in other DURP courses and at the Shidler School of Business.  “I was both honored and humbled when Tom asked me late last year to take over his class when he retired,” Lee confided.  But that’s not the end of the story.  Our Department Chair, Makena Coffman, has asked Lee to take on a second class which he will begin teaching in the Spring of 2019, Plan 101 – Sustainable Cities.

As for the DURP `Ohana, Lee is planning his encore of co-chairing the Roots and Leaves kick-off celebration that we had last year, with a return performance, this time as the Chair of DURP’s 50th Anniversary Celebration Committee to plan an event for Fall 2019.