Alumni Profile

The population of Weld County, Colorado, about 200,000 residents, is expected to double by 2020, says Brad Mueller, who heads long-range planning for the county. His charge: to balance growth and the equitable distribution of services. Mueller loves the variety of a typical workday, which can involve everything from aesthetics (landscaping) to technical concerns (soil science) to legal and economic ones (policy and the law).

 

Back when he searched for the right graduate program, Mueller considered law, finance, design, and economics. "Then, I stumbled across planning, which had some of all of that," he says.

The balance of structure, through core courses, and flexibility and the interdisciplinary nature Cornell "really worked out well for me," says Mueller. He studied land use and physical planning within CRP, and facilities design, economics, and finance within other Cornell programs — all of which have helped him along his career path.