From Classroom to Competitions: UB Faculty Mentor Empowers Future Leaders
BY DARRA KUBERA
Published August 8, 2025
Through many roles, Matthew Roland serves as a mentor for students at UB's School of Architecture and Planning. Photo by Lukas Iverson
Matthew Roland holds many titles — director of education for the Rudy Bruner Center for Urban Excellence, director of the Real Estate Development Program, and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning — but above all else he serves as a mentor for students at UB’s School of Architecture and Planning.
At the Rudy Bruner Center for Urban Excellence (RBC), housed within the School of Architecture and Planning, Roland empowers students through publications, awards, research, and educational programming. RBC is a research and educational center that’s focused on innovative thinking and fostering conversations on urban design.
Throughout the academic year, Roland advises students participating in two prestigious national competitions. In the fall, he mentors the UB team in the University of Maryland’s Colvin Case Study Competition, where students complete a 20+ page case study after fully analyzing a real estate project. These teams have consistently placed in the top 10 each year they have entered.
Over winter break, he collaborates with colleagues to guide multidisciplinary teams in the highly competitive Urban Land Institute Hines Competition, an annual, graduate-level competition intended to provide an interdisciplinary learning experience for business and design students. The competition gives architecture and real estate students a chance to work together to develop solutions for a real-world site revealed each year at the start of the challenge.
Through these experiences, both academic and extracurricular, Roland encourages our students and contributes to their growth as design, planning, and real estate development professionals.
Roland is an active member of the Urban Land Institute, serving on the Executive Committee of its Western New York Chapter and chairing the UrbanPlan Committee. UrbanPlan is a nationwide curriculum that teaches high school and university students, professionals, and community members about the trade-offs in development and community planning.
As a national instructor for this curriculum, Roland provides training and guidance for volunteers and professors who are utilizing UrbanPlan, conducts local workshops for public officials and community members, and integrates UrbanPlan into his courses at UB. He is also working to incorporate Rudy Bruner Award case studies into the UrbanPlan curriculum, as several of those projects exemplify the lessons taught in UrbanPlan.
When it comes to contributing to our community, Roland leads by example, as a contributor to the East Side Avenues, specifically the Community Based Real Estate Development Training (CBREDT) Program, which provides real estate education to residents and property owners on Buffalo’s East Side. He also works with CRS and Broadway Fillmore Neighborhood Housing Services to provide technical assistance for all the graduates and access to a dedicated fund from Empire State Development to enable the graduates to see their projects come to fruition. Within the program, East Side residents are becoming their developers and property owners in an effort to keep and create wealth in their community.
“I’m excited to continue applying my professional knowledge and experience to help students understand the fundamental real-world forces and complex interdisciplinary tradeoffs in real estate,” said Roland, adding that the 'symbiotic relationship' across the School’s programs is productive ground for addressing complex urban problems.
