Parks and Recreation Alumni Making Centennial Campus A Vibrant and Active Community Space

Two parks, recreation and tourism management alumni are venturing out on a new path of success on NC State’s Centennial Campus. Jude DesNoyer ’06 and Katherine “Katie” Butler ’23 are the brains behind a new initiative known as Centennial Campus Placemaking, which aims to attract the local community to Centennial Campus.

“Placemaking is essentially parks not in parks,” explained DesNoyer, director of Centennial Campus Placemaking, which was founded in August 2024. “It’s taking spaces that aren’t parks but are community spaces and how to think about it like it could be a park, but the organizational, management and budget structures aren’t the same.”

Placemaking is essentially a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. It aims to inspire people to imagine public spaces as the heart of communities, according to the Project for Public Spaces.

“Our job is to create a vibrant and active place on Centennial Campus for everyone, not just NC State or NC State faculty, staff and students,” DesNoyer said. “We want to be open to our private industry partners and tenants who are on Centennial Campus, as well as the local public.”

For DesNoyer and Butler, their job is to think through strategies and programmatic efforts, and they have been transitioning their work lately more into marketing and communications, which Butler, who serves as the initiative’s marketing and communications liaison, takes the reins on. They also focus on thinking through some of the spaces on Centennial Campus and how they are used, including Lake Raleigh and The Corner. 

A big part of Centennial Campus Placemaking is the vast array of programs and events they host on Centennial Campus. DesNoyer and Butler initiate a lot of events on Centennial Campus, from social hours to pickleball to monthly hikes in Lake Raleigh Woods. 

“It’s been interesting to see the growth and how much of a demand there is for community resources,” Butler said. “It’s like a ‘third place’ —not where you live, not where you work — it’s a place where you can relax and have community, and I think that’s the realm Jude and I exist in, where we tie in the workplace with the ‘third place’ concept.”

Oftentimes, there are new program opportunities and they come from individuals who are really interested in a concept but aren’t quite sure how to bring it to fruition. One of Butler’s favorites was a “sneaker fashion show.” For this, a professor in the Wilson College of Textiles pitched the idea since their research was dedicated to “sneakerheads,” who are people who collect, trade and/or admire sneakers as a hobby.

“It was a really successful event,” Butler said. “We partnered with Platform Magazine and brought a lot of people together who probably would have never come to Centennial Campus in the first place. I’m excited to see what ‘crazy’ ideas someone has next.”

What makes DesNoyer and Butler’s jobs particularly enjoyable is the fact that the day-to-day routine is never the same. One project that DesNoyer is currently working on is a plan to enhance the Lake Raleigh area. “I’m working on how we can create a place for research and education to happen, as well as a place for people to come on the weekends to just go for a walk — a natural destination that compliments all the great work taking place on Centennial Campus.”

For the Lake Raleigh project, a major priority is working with stakeholders such as the Lake Raleigh Woods Advisory Panel to complete a loop around the lake. DesNoyer said that he finds that a lot of people who wouldn’t naturally come to Centennial Campus won’t come to Lake Raleigh.

Throughout the project, DesNoyer and Butler will be taking small steps here and there, possibly working with the PRT 358 capstone course to see if they want to do some programming at Lake Raleigh. In this course, students learn conceptual knowledge that they go on to apply to a service-learning project. 

Unique Journeys to Parks and Recreation

Both DesNoyer and Butler had what some would call non-traditional journeys to the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management program and their current careers. For Butler, she started her college journey in exploratory studies, transitioned into the College of Design during the height of COVID-19, and during her senior year, she decided she needed a new career path outside of design.

“In the College of Design, I focused a lot on user experience, and that was pretty new to me as a concept,” Butler said. “My one professor told me she had a student who was in my boat, very passionate about user experience and the outdoors and they found a way to transition from graphic design into the world of tourism. The outdoors has always played a very special part in my life, and I really needed to have a people-facing career, and parks and recreation really combined all of the things that I loved with a really incredible community.”

During her senior year of college, Butler enrolled in the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management program with a concentration in outdoor recreation. She had to cram a lot into her senior year and her fifth year, but her instructors and advisor made it a seamless transition and helped her to feel that she could achieve whatever she needed to achieve. In the summer of 2023, Butler graduated from the program and went on to intern for DesNoyer, whom she had met when her PRT 358 class worked on a collaborative mural for The Corner.

The path to a career in parks and recreation was non-linear for DesNoyer as well. Upon graduating from the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management program with a concentration in outdoor recreation, he went on to attend graduate school at Aurora University, majoring in recreation administration. After graduate school, DesNoyer spent eight years conducting recreation programming on aircraft carriers around the world for the U.S. Navy. 

Upon returning to Raleigh, DesNoyer started to plan beer festivals, and one day, while he was at a beer festival, he was approached about working for the University’s Real Estate and Development Office and the rest is history.

Looking back on how the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management program played a role in her current skill set, Butler said she thinks a lot of the classes she took and how what she learned in them she uses every day at work and not always in expected ways. A lot of those classes were interdisciplinary, including an introduction to sports marketing class. 

“The program has unparalleled faculty who really care about you and have been there for so long and they want you to succeed,” Butler said. “You can feel that and you’re motivated to go to class. Even when it was in the middle of COVID, people were still showing up and they found a way to adapt and still make things meaningful. I think that is the whole mission of the program: to make things meaningful, whether it’s a park or the tourism industry or even a game of golf.”

For DesNoyer, the focus on interacting with people was an aspect of the program that he always loved and he loves to see how the program has evolved over the years. “I’m still learning some of the stuff that the college is doing now. It’s cool seeing some of the ways they’re addressing mental wellness, health and leisure and using nature, but it still has a focus on people and understanding that everybody is different but you can still use recreation to help support them no matter what.”

Outside of their jobs, both DesNoyer and Butler love being outdoors. True to her former major, Butler will also always have a soft spot in her heart for art, especially having a mother who is an art teacher. Family is another big passion of DesNoyer’s and he enjoys spending time with his three-year-old daughter Hollis and playing disc golf. 

Their advice for students looking to explore a career path to parks and recreation at NC State: “Embrace every learning concept, every class that you have,” Butler said. “I only had a short time in the program and I crammed everything in and I wish that I had been able to take it more slowly and try every little thing that the program had to offer because there are so many resources. Don’t be afraid to do something different. If something interests you, let that be your guiding force, and it might be totally different from what everybody else is doing.”

As a big outdoor recreation person, DesNoyer likens experiences to tools, or gear. “When I was younger, I was always attracted to gear. I think I had like five tents. As a single person, I had no business owning five tents but I had five tents, four sleeping bags, and a couple different Therm-a-Rests, for whatever sort of adventure might come up. It was just about having it to be prepared whenever the moment came, and I think recreation professionals in particular have the opportunity to take a vast array of experiences and think about those as tools, or gear. Always have your gear because you never know when the opportunity is going to come that your gear is going to be needed.”