Alumnus plans for students’ future hands-on experience

Walter Fields ’71 believes his professional success as an urban planner was strengthened by his willingness to dig in and understand all parts of the process for a development or municipal plan. Through the Walter G. Fields III Scholarship Endowment, Fields is investing in East Carolina University so current students can have opportunities to “get their feet dirty” in the field.

“I felt like I always had an advantage as a city planner by growing up in the construction business. I always had a little different view about how things worked that you can never get out of a textbook, no matter how many hours and credits you take,” Fields said. “If you don’t go out there and get your feet dirty, you don’t really, fully understand the things that later you’re going to purport to regulate. So, I thought that was very important, and I always advocated for that.”

Walter Fields visits the community and regional planning program in the Thomas Hariott College of Arts and Sciences, where the planning lab was named in his honor.

Fields is one of thousands of alumni and friends who have supported the institution with generosity through Pirate Nation Gives. ECU is celebrating a decade of impact built through the annual day of giving. Every gift has created an impact on students and ECU programs, some with immediate support and others that will yield results for years to come.

The Fields endowment will provide scholarships for undergraduate students majoring in community and regional planning who complete internships that broaden their knowledge of planning and how communities work.

Fields, a geography/city and regional planning graduate, has spent more than 55 years in planning. He devoted 25 years to planning for local governments, beginning in Hampton, Virginia, and then Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. For 10 years of his public service, he served as the land development manager for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission. Since 1997, Fields has served as president of The Walter Fields Group Inc., where he is a consultant for planning, zoning and land development.

Workforce Ready

ECU offers a Bachelor of Science in community and regional planning and an online Master of Science in planning and development. ECU’s undergraduate planning degree is the only program in North Carolina accredited by the Planning Accreditation Board.

Fields is proud that he was prepared to enter the workforce with his bachelor’s degree. He believes the ability of current students to gain hands-on experience through undergraduate internships will prepare them for a career.

“I think planners need to be out of the building, out in the neighborhood. Go to the church social on Sunday night, and don’t wait to be invited, just show up,” Fields said. “I think that’s one of the fundamental principles, you have to get out there on the ground and understand what people are concerned about and why.”

As Fields began to approach 50 years since graduation in 2021, he reflected on his college years and his career.

“I just started sort of reflecting a little bit on my life and how I got to where I am. It all started right there at East Carolina,” Fields said. “I can’t think of anywhere better to [invest in] than the place that put me where I am today. I’m here because of East Carolina and the planning program that taught me my career.”

Dr. Misun Hur, associate professor director of community and regional planning in the Department of Earth, Environment, and Planning, said the first scholarship from Fields’ endowment is expected to be awarded in 2027.

“We are excited about it. We expect the endowment will generate about $10,000 annually. The funds will help support students’ experiential learning opportunities (internships),” Hur said. “Walter highly values the impact of the vital, hands-on industry experience on students. He wanted to provide support for students who accept unpaid internships (many rural eastern NC communities lack funding to support an intern) or cover housing expenses during their internship.”

Hur said Fields’ support goes beyond his endowment. For the past several years, Fields has helped support students attending the American Planning Association North Carolina Chapter (APA-NC) annual conferences and the Community and Regional Planning program’s annual spring banquet. With funds raised by alumni — including Fields — a total of 37 undergraduate students (20 in 2024 and 17 in 2025) attended the APA-NC conference.

“Urban planning is a professional discipline that both responds to and shapes evolving societal needs. Exposure to the profession, learning from best practices, networking with planners from diverse communities, and working in different specialties are critical,” Hur said. “The financial support from alumni like Walter helps our students move a step closer to their careers.”

Planning Connections

Students benefit from the support of alumni like Fields.

Kaylie Williams ’25 said conference attendance has provided her with valuable connections and insights within the planning world and propelled her toward being a planner.

“The APA-NC conference is definitely one of those conferences that has inspired me to continue on my journey as a successful planner,” Williams said. “It provided me with a tangible perspective of all of the amazing things that I can accomplish in my professional career.”

Mia Palma ’25 also attended the 2025 APA-NC Conference and said she gained insights into historic preservation, land use planning, transportation, stormwater management and resiliency planning.

“I was able to explore new ideas like the Dutch biking culture and how the city of Charlotte is implementing it into their planning,” Palma said. “This conference truly highlighted the many possibilities within the field of planning. It was also a fantastic way to meet alumni, reconnect with current and former classmates, and network with professionals in the field.”

Decades of Learning and Planning

“At East Carolina, back in the day, Wes Hankins (former professor and program founder) was very focused on when you walked out from graduation, go to somewhere the next day and walk into a public planning agency and go to work and be productive,” Fields said.

Throughout his career, Fields stayed on the planning path, working with communities and getting things done.

“I really wanted to focus more on the actual planning work,” Fields said. “I left government employment in 1997 and opened my own practice in Charlotte. Still did some planning work, [including creating] the comprehensive plan as a consultant for Gaston County and Lincoln County, and did some work in South Carolina, writing ordinances.”

Fields also worked on a joint land use study for Camp Lejeune in Onslow County. The majority of his practice has been entitlements, rezoning and land development processes. Fields has always been drawn to projects that allow him to work with people.

“I’ve worked with the biggest developers in Charlotte, and I’ve worked with little teeny daycare centers, they just needed some help getting things done,” Fields said. “So my practice is very wide and varied.”

Fields invested in being a better city planner. Early in his career, Fields said he wanted to see the next generation of development that would come to Charlotte. He traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to learn how neighborhoods were planned and city infrastructure was working.

“I went and looked. Nobody does that anymore,” he said. “Arguably it’s a different world, but I think those opportunities are there for people who want to seek them out.”

Among his achievements are a comprehensive plan for Charlotte and the plans for the infrastructure development of Ballantyne in Charlotte.

“I worked with a staff team on the 2005 Comprehensive Plan, which was prepared from 1982 to 1985 and was adopted in ’85,” Fields said. “That really set the framework for Charlotte’s growth that is still in place today.”

The plan included major decisions on transportation and other forms of infrastructure. In the end, his team produced a plan that both the city council and the county commission adopted by unanimous votes.

“What flowed from that was another project I’m probably the proudest of, which was a complete rewrite of our zoning and subdivision ordinances,” Fields said. “That was finished in late 1999 and adopted in 2001. It served us for almost 20 years, and guided the growth of the development of Charlotte and the unincorporated areas around Charlotte.”

Fields remembers an eight-hour night sitting in a room with landowners, developers, architects and attorneys in Charlotte working through every detail of Ballantyne, a large development between the city and the border of South Carolina.

“In those eight hours, we negotiated every single important significant component of an area of Ballantyne, including an interstate highway right of way, infrastructure for tens of thousands of residential units, hundreds of thousands of square feet of office development,” Fields said. “Literally the entire development team was in that room with me. It was a cooperative process, and we got hundreds of acres for park land.”

Internships of Impact

Fields hopes the addition of intern scholarships will enhance ECU’s planning program. Students can rely on scholarship income so they can accept an internship that engages them in active planning work, so they can see what it takes and how it works.

“I hope that they get an internship where they are actually able to do some work out in the community, participate on the street level with real-life problems that the planners on staff in that organization are dealing with,” he said. “When they come back to school for their junior or senior year, they now can ask different questions than they did without that experience.”

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