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By Times staff writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 22, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Susan Ajoc, who has helped mold the city's neighborhood program into one of the nation's models, has been named a Distinguished Alumnus at the University of Florida.
The urban and regional planning department of the university's College of Design, Construction and Planning -- formerly the College of Architecture -- conferred the award earlier this month.
"I was really surprised. It's quite an honor," Ajoc said.
Faculty and alumni nominate recipients, said Paul D. Zwick, urban and regional planning department chairman.
"Her body of work was with neighborhoods and neighborhood planning and working directly with the mayor's office and handling hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts. It's more a body of work than for any individual project," Zwick said.
Ajoc, 36, earned a master's degree in urban and regional planning in 1991. She had started with the city about a year earlier as an entry-level planner. Her first assignment was to help develop plans to improve the Round Lake neighborhood just north of downtown.
She has played a part in creating numerous plans for neighborhoods around the city and has been state chairman of the Florida Neighborhoods Conference. She was promoted to neighborhood partnership director in 1999.
Ajoc earned a bachelor's degree in psychology, with a chemistry minor, from the University of North Florida. She held the student's seat on the Florida Board of Regents during the 1986-87 school year.