Tara Bengle

Tara received an undergraduate degree in art and before returning to graduate school was an elementary art teacher at a Title 1 school in the CMS district. As a student of ceramics, the content of her work frequently focused on the social injustices and inequalities that are often times prevalent in our urban communities.

In 2008, she left teaching and began the geography program at UNC Charlotte to pursue studies that would allow her to work in neighborhood planning. Currently, she is a doctoral student and intends to coalesce these two prevailing interests—planning and education—into a dissertation project. Tara has been with CHARP since the fall of 2008 when she was introduced to the program through the Community Planning Workshop taught by Dr. Sorensen. Her dissertation was a three-phase action research project that explored empowerment planning, a participatory model of planning concerned with building organizational capacity to influence planning and community development outcomes.

Tara served as the CHARP liaison with the Reid Park neighborhood.

She is currently serving as the Community Research Manager at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte.