Biography

Plater earned a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and most recently taught in that discipline at Cornell. She has a master's in architecture degree from Columbia University and a B.A. in psychology with a minor in fine art from Villanova University. Before coming to Cornell, she taught at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1989 to 1994. Her areas of scholarly expertise include international migration and immigration, African development, urban development and community planning, and architectural design analysis. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Kellogg Foundation leadership fellowship. She also received grants from the Cornell Faculty Fellows-in-Service Program for two collaborative community development projects. In one project she and her students worked with Ithaca's Southside Community Center on such team-driven efforts as the teaching of computer skills to community members and the planning of a historic map of the Southside neighborhood, including structures that were stops on the underground railroad. The second project involved grass-roots economic strategies for El Lim—n, a small village in the Dominican Republic whose population was being depleted through migration. Cornell's Office of Distance Learning helped link Plater and her students with the villagers. In addition Plater worked for the Ford Foundation, where she was involved in a grant-giving program with countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and she has lived and worked in Africa, Europe, Asia, Central America and the Caribbean. In addition, she is a visual artist whose paintings have been exhibited in Philadelphia and Ithaca galleries.