Student Spotlight: Jeremy Griffith

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., STRIDE Research Coordinator

Jeremy Griffith is a master’s student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida. He will be graduating December 2022.

Jeremy Griffith is a master’s student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida (UF). He completed his undergraduate studies in 2020 majoring in Sustainability and the Build Environment, a degree program in the UF College of Design, Construction and Planning.

Griffith considers himself a planning generalist. His interest in transportation come from how planning fits into the big picture of moving people and goods from one place to another in a safe and sustainable way.

“For me, my interest in planning comes from a care for people, and for the environment,” he said.  “From my perspective, planning holds incredible power in setting the structures that allow a society to succeed or fail. It may be a bit rosy and aspirational, but I was interested in planning because I wanted to make the most impact on how people relate to each other and to their environment.”

Griffith is a STRIDE-affiliated student. He has worked on multiple STRIDE-funded projects such as “A Framework for the Development of a Diverse Transportation Workforce in the Southeast Region,” a project led Dr. Ruth Steiner, his master’s program adviser at UF. He’s also worked on “Urban Freight Delivery and Loading Spaces,” a project led by Dr. Noreen McDonald of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), including an additional project led by his graduate program adviser, Dr. Steiner, titled “A Centralized Inventory on Workforce Development in the Southeast Region,”.

Working on so many research projects has certainly provided Griffith with invaluable experiences. He’s learned how transportation intersects with planning, a skill set that is very much appreciated and sought after by future employers. This is why research projects funded by the STRIDE Center must include space for student research assistants; it’s a great learning experience for students.

Jeremy Griffith with his graduate program adviser, Dr. Ruth Steiner, and other colleagues.

“I came in with little to no experience in the transportation side of planning, so working with STRIDE under Ruth gave me a great opportunity to round out my planning education,” he said. “I came in with the perspective that I was here to learn as much as I could from Ruth and the entire STRIDE team.” 

In each of the projects he was involved with, Griffith served a specific role.  For example, in the project related to the diverse transportation workforce in the Southeast, he was responsible for managing the research team, keeping them on track, gathering data, and undertaking most of the writing responsibilities. As for the project with Dr. McDonald at UNC, he mostly assisted with the analysis and writing, including “scraping reddit threads for data collection on urban freight issues.” Because of the experience he gained in the first two projects he has been tasked with developing and managing the currently ongoing STRIDE Year 6 project related to a centralized inventory on transportation workforce development in the Southeast.

So, what are the takeaways from the projects that Griffith has been involved with? For starters, the framework for a diverse transportation workforce in the Southeast concluded a need for more coordination on workforce development issues from the transportation industry as a whole.

“Everyone in the transportation industry will agree that workforce development is a huge priority, but there’s not much in the way of a unified strategy or framework to guide the industry at-large,” he said. “This project is an attempt to wrangle the messy landscape of workforce development and offers the Southeastern Transportation practitioners a framework to better direct future strategy.” 

As for the urban freight project with UNC, the study concluded that overall, cities and planners have not done a good job of accommodating the uptick in urban freight.

“This project gives plenty of examples of policy considerations that cities can take, giving planners a toolkit for developing a systematic approach to managing the surging demand for urban freight services,” he said.

And finally, for the ongoing project with his master’s program adviser, Dr. Steiner, he expects this project to generate a one stop shop for transportation workforce resources.

“One of the biggest barriers to coordination on workforce development issues is the lack of venues for sharing information about available resources or best practices,” Griffith said. “This is best done at a regional level, and STRIDE or other University Transportation Centers have a huge role to play in coordination on workforce development issues.”

Griffith is scheduled to graduate in December 2022. So, what’s in store for his future? Griffith plans to move to Georgia and is currently looking for a job as a planner.

“I’m moving to Atlanta in January and have been on the job hunt for the past month, but nothing solid yet,” he said.  “Ideally, in a few months, I’ll be working in Atlanta as a planner – what type of planner is yet to be determined but I’m open to any and all opportunities”