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In the Fall of 2020, the Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) hosted their first Quality Communities Retreat, sponsored by Mayors’ Institute on City Design and Oklahoma Municipal League.
This retreat was broken into two sessions, each attended by four community delegations who had the opportunity to get project-specific advice from a panel of professionals as well as from other community teams. The panels included Shawn Schaefer, the director of OU-Tulsa’s Urban Design Studio, and Bret Betnar, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Division of Landscape Architecture. The eight communities who participated included Davis, Midwest City, Langston, Okemah, the Asian District of OKC, Edmond, Eufaula, and Sand Springs. Each session was a one-day retreat, the first hosted on a hybrid format and the second hosted fully virtually due to COVID-19 concerns.
Before the retreat, the IQC team of OU Graduate Assistants did site visits to the eight participating communities in order to develop a case study and discussion questions for each community’s project site. This information, including site photos, were compiled into a session briefing book. The IQC team would also lead the preparation and facilitation of the two retreat sessions.
The Quality Communities Retreat held guided sessions for each community where other community leaders and members of the resource panel could offer advice and guidance. Each community team was able to go back to their cities with a better understanding of their project and paths forward.
OU Graduate Assistants on the IQC Team:
Alice Calmon, Landscape Architecture
Bethany Grissom, Landscape Architecture
Mumuchhu Gurung, Regional & City Planning
Matthew Kessler, Landscape Architecture
Naoki Tsuruta, Regional & City Planning
Read more about the retreat and the community collaborators by clicking the link below.
Quality Communities Retreats | The Institute for Quality Communities
Telesis, a journal produced by students in the University of Oklahoma Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, has earned first place in the 2026 Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals for its seventh volume, “Unfold.” This marks the fourth time the publication has earned recognition for excellence in student architectural journalism. It shares the honor with student journals from Columbia University, University of Michigan, and Cal Poly.
Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture congratulates Thinh "Henry" Duong, a master's student in the Division of Interior Design, for earning first place in the 2026 Robert Bruce Thompson Annual Student Light Fixture Design Competition.
Gibbs College of Architecture Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) Director and Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Design (PLAD) faculty member Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., recently published a new book, Collective Yearning: Black Women Artists from the Zimmerli Art Museum.
