“Bria was already on the faculty when I arrived at Rutgers in 1974. She was a generous and welcoming presence from the start, a gift that was extremely valued by a young faculty member just out of graduate school. For the next forty or so years, Bria was unrelenting in her mentoring, support, encouragement, and unfailing good humor that she extended unreservedly to all those around her, from entering students to senior faculty.
She repeatedly opened her home for parties and get-togethers that forged a community among otherwise disparate and disconnected souls. Her research on community development, tourism, and women’s urban experience was inspirational, coupling clear-eyed observation with political commitment, and her writing had a formative effect on discourse and practice in the fields of planning, geography, and urban studies. Her retirement from the faculty left a void that was never adequately filled, and her passing marks a generational shift in the field. Bria was a gem, and she will be sorely missed.”
Robert W. Lake, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers Bloustein School
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“Bria was always a quiet force for common sense, fairness, and love of teaching and learning. Her benevolent imprint on other Bloustein lives will be permanent.”
Frank Popper, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers Bloustein School; Professor, Princeton University
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“I met Bria when I was a graduate student in geography at Rutgers in the mid-1990s, long before I came back as a faculty member in Bloustein. Her house in Highland Park was a secondary lounge for graduate students then. We were all always there.
Being a PhD student can be – and was for me – filled with anxiety and with the feelings of not being good enough and not belonging. And the warmth Bria consistently showed to all of us did so much to break down those feelings and allow us to grow and develop. She was also a model of how to be a good and kind person in an industry—the academy—that is dominated by narrow output measures that devalue goodness or kindness. She was a model of how to be an engaged scholar and live a life of the mind without being reduced to those same narrow output measures. And she was a model of how to take our jobs as educators and mentors and scholars seriously without taking ourselves too seriously.
We can read and think and teach and mentor and write without losing the twinkle in our eyes that indicates our joy in doing the work we do. Bria was the best model of that I have ever encountered of how to be that person within the academy, and I miss her presence in Bloustein and in Geography.”
James DeFilippis, Professor, Rutgers Bloustein School
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“Bria was an outstanding resource for early-career faculty and students. She provided the glue that held urbanists together across Rutgers and the world. She was the first person many of us reached out to when we had questions about teaching. She provided engaging tours of redevelopment in New Brunswick to scores of students and faculty. And she graciously created the spaces to celebrate as students completed dissertations and faculty moved through the tenure process. Her intelligence, warmth, and generosity of spirit will be missed.”
Kathe Newman, Professor, Rutgers Bloustein School; Director, Ralph W. Voorhees Center for Civic Engagement
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“I have always felt grateful that I have found an intellectual home at Bloustein and Rutgers in the U.S. And Bria was a mentor who helped me navigate what, at times, felt like unbridgeable gaps in work and life. Bria’s scholarship on tourism, urban geography, and international urban development was a powerful reminder that cities confront not so dissimilar challenges, whether they are in the Global South or the Global North. She paid close attention to grounded empirical nuances and always pushed me to think about how what we observe on the ground can inform how we conceptualize. I turned to her scholarship, mentorship, and warm friendship during those bumpy early years as I transitioned from a doctoral student to a postdoc, and then to an assistant professor. The guidance Bria gave me continues to help me today. Kathe Newman once said that “Bria is wicked good” at teaching—and she was indeed an incredible teacher. Bria always gave me honest and constructive feedback. I will miss her deeply.
Mi Shih, Ph.D. ’10, Associate Professor, Rutgers Bloustein School; Director, Urban Planning and Policy Development Program
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“I’m a long-time faculty spouse before I became a geography graduate student. My sentiment is simple—Bria was the heart of her department with such openness and generosity, always offering simply and unintrusively.”
Deborah Popper, Visiting Professor, Princeton University; Professor Emerita, College of Staten Island and Graduate Center/CUNY; Vice President, American Geographical Society; Co-editor, FOCUS on Geography, http://focusongeography.org
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“Bria always supported us with the warmest smile. As an international student, those casual chats and words of encouragement in the hallway added so much color and strength to what was often a challenging journey.
Bria was not only a geographer but also an outstanding educator. In the classroom, she had a special way of sparking lively discussions while guiding us toward deeper reflection and insight. I can still vividly recall the questions she asked in our Tourism Geography course, which remain with me even after twenty years.
On my academic crossroads, Bria took me in. Her unwavering support—either academic guidance or writing advice—remained with me all the way to the very last moments of my oral defense. For that, I carry immense gratitude in my heart.
To me, Bria was more like family, a mother figure. We lived in the same neighborhood, where she was the kind and loving “foreign grandma” to my two children. I can still picture the yard sale before I left the U.S., chatting with her on the front lawn, saying goodbye, never realizing that farewell would turn out to be our last.
Looking back on more than ten years of my teaching career, Bria, you have always been the role model, shaping my vision of what an ideal teacher and mentor should be. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
Hsiu-Tzu Betty Chang, Ph.D. ‘11, Associate Professor, Department of Urban Planning, College of Planning and Design, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan (Dissertation Advisor: Briavel Holcomb)
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“During my doctoral years, Bria’s thoughtful feedback and constant encouragement gave me the confidence to carry on. Her warmth and forthrightness showed me what it means to be a true mentor — a standard I still strive toward but have never quite reached. Sometimes, in my own classroom, I share with my students the memory of having once been guided by such a generous teacher.”
Yen-Wen Sandra Peng, Ph.D. ’04, Professor, Institute of Public Affairs Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan (Dissertation Advisor: Briavel Holcomb)
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