Regional and City Planning faculty John Harris and Charlie Warnken are part of an interdisciplinary team led by the OU Institute for Resilient Environment and Energy Systems. The team was recently awarded a $599,000 Climate Pollution Reduction Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. As a part of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Justice40 Initiative, these grants from the EPA support the development and implementation of plans to reduce harmful air pollution.
With this funding, the OU team will support the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality to prepare a climate action plan that will reduce emissions in communities across the state. Climate action plans are comprised of three main parts: an inventory of emission sources, a catalogue of current and future experiences of climate impacts in communities and a series of proposals to mitigate these emissions and climate impacts.
The team is led by Principal Investigator Tim Filley, who is assisted by Co-Principal Investigators Lauren Mullenbach, Scott Greene, Charlie Warnken, John Harris, Chenghao Wang, Ming Xue, Xiaoming Hu, Royce Floyd, Brad Illston, David Ebert, Binbin Weng, Otavio Costa Acevedo, Petra Klein and Xiangming Xiao. They are currently developing various project proposals in the following categories:
Harris and Warnken’s portion of the project focuses on engaging low-income and disadvantaged communities. The RCPL faculty are also working with graduate students from OU’s Planning, Landscape Architecture and Design division. As a part of their community planning studio, the students are conducting workshops throughout the state to gain a better understanding of climate impacts on local communities and how to address these issues accordingly.
The students began these community workshops in November and will continue into February. The students will then compile a series of reports about these communities for submission to the DEQ.
Petya Stefanoff, Chair of the Educational Committee with the American Planning Association, Oklahoma Chapter (APA-OK) and Gibbs College PhD candidate, has developed a new training program for local government officials. The program, focused on land use, zoning principles, and land development, recently certified its first graduates with Certified Citizen Planner status.
Gibbs Construction Science and Architecture students recently traveled to Dublin, Ireland, to compete in the Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) Region 8 Student Competition. The team partnered with Czech Technical University and secured third place in the Design-Build category.
Gibbs College is pleased to present the exhibition Vollendorf in Oklahoma: The Architecture of Dean Bryant Vollendorf during the Spring 2026 semester. It will be on display in Gould Hall, on the OU-Norman Campus, from February 16, 2026 - March 13, 2026.
