Kate Deutsch was awarded a University of California Transportation Center dissertation grant of $20,000 in the Spring 2011 award cycle competition. This is one more success in the long list of research awards that Kate has received for her graduate work at UCSB; others include UCTC Fellowships in 2006/7 and 2007/8, the Eisenhower Fellowship (twice), the AAG Student Paper Competition (2009), and the 2009-10 Brython Davis Endowment Graduate Fellowship.
According to Robert Cervero, the director of the UCTC, “All 14 submissions for the Spring 2011 award cycle were quite good; thus, competition was very strong. UCTC’s budget allowed only 7 of the 14 proposals to be funded. All proposals were reviewed, evaluated, and ranked independently by both former UCTC Dissertation Award grantees and senior researchers in the field.”
Kate’s dissertation examines the two-way relationship between time use and destination choice while including an in-depth exploration of the influence of sense of place and social networks in these choices. This will involve conducting a survey in Santa Barbara County, including a household questionnaire, satellite survey questions for groups of respondents, and a GPS aided week-long, in-depth activity diary, plus a five week passive data collection. Analysis will be conducted using this data and will be combined with various additional data sources. A suite of models will be developed and employed to research the structure, development, and composition of social networks and sense of place, as well as the influence of these on time use and destination choice.
Congratulations to Kate for her outstanding work!
Editor’s note: Thanks to Professor Kostas Goulias for providing the material for this article.
