The Lemon Family Distinguished Speaker Series in Community and Real Estate Development launched this fall with its inaugural lecture delivered by Jared Della Valle, CEO and Co-Founder of Alloy Development.
The Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Design is excited to announce that a new agreement has been formally established between Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC) and the University of Oklahoma’s Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture. This partnership creates a direct and seamless transfer pathway for students from the Associate Arts (AA) of Diversified Studies at OCCC to the Bachelor of Science (BS) in Environmental Design (EnD) at OU.
Gibbs College of Architecture proudly congratulates Dr. Shakil Ahmad Shimul, assistant professor of Architecture, whose collaborative research with Dr. Wei Li, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Texas Tech University, has led to a newly issued U.S. Patent (No. 12,435,903 B2) titled “Electroactive Polymer Valve,” and issued October 7, 2025.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Oklahoma Norman (OU Norman) and OU Health, including Interior Design professors, has published their study in the journal Virtual Reality.
An unprecedented coalition of Oklahoma’s academic institutions, Tribal Nations, industry leaders, nonprofits, and government agencies has officially submitted a full proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Engines Program. Titled WxFORGE — Forging New Frontiers in Extreme Weather Resilience and Innovation, the effort aims to position Oklahoma as a national leader in resilient infrastructure technologies, workforce development, and weather-adaptive innovations.
Bryce Lowery, associate professor of Regional and City Planning, recently published an article in The Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. The article, “Societal Transformation Through Social Entrepreneurial Action Research,” explores recent research Lowery conducted with collaborators from the San Diego State University Fowler College of Business and School of Public Affairs.
The OU Institute for Quality Communities recently hosted a Route 66 Placemaking Retreat in collaboration with the OU Arts and Humanities Forum. The retreat was funded by an Oklahoma Humanities “Community Discussions” grant that an interdisciplinary OU team received in November. This retreat built upon the team’s site visits and community discussions in several historic towns along Route 66.
Open Design Collective, a non-profit organization founded by Gibbs College Professors Vanessa Morrison and Deborah Richards, was recently awarded an Environmental Justice Government-to-Government Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. Open Design will receive $500,000 to engage, support and strengthen community-led efforts in the historically Black John F. Kennedy Neighborhood in Northeast Oklahoma City.
An interdisciplinary team of OU students from the Gibbs College of Architecture, Gallogly College of Engineering and Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication was recently selected as a finalist for the 2024 Solar Decathlon Competition. The team is competing in this year’s Design Challenge in the Single-Family Housing Category.
Regional and City Planning faculty John Harris and Charlie Warnken are part of an interdisciplinary team that was recently awarded a $599,000 Climate Pollution Reduction Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. 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.
Professors of Architecture Tamar Zinguer and Tiziana Proietti were recently awarded with the 2023 Gibbs Research Fellowship. This fellowship provides three years of support for research and creative activity in Architecture. Applications are reviewed and ranked by three external peer reviews based on the candidate’s track record and the promise of their 5-year research plan.
An interdisciplinary team from the University of Oklahoma recently received funding from Oklahoma Humanities, a non-profit organization in Oklahoma City. The funding will support a humanities-informed design experience in preparation for the Route 66 centennial in 2026. The project, Route 66 Placemaking Communities Retreat, will explore placemaking efforts for communities along the historic Mother Road.
A collaborative project between the University of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Department of Commerce and the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency was recently featured in The Oklahoman. A team of OU researchers are currently redesigning the Oklahoma Housing Needs Assessment, an online source of detailed information about Oklahoma’s 77 counties.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has selected the University of Oklahoma-led Southern Plains Transportation Center as the 2023-2027 USDOT Region 6 Regional University Transportation Center. Under the umbrella of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, this center brings federal funding of $3 million per year to OU along with $3 million per year in matching funds. Dr. Tammy McCuen, Professor of Construction Science, is part of the OU multidisciplinary research team representing engineering, construction, and geography and environmental sustainability
An interdisciplinary team of OU researchers recently won a Major Research Instrumentation award from the National Science Foundation and received a $589,262 grant. The research team includes Professors of Architecture Andres Cavieres as co-principal investigator and Dan Butko as senior personnel.
Insert a short summary of the article here, usually a few sentences long. It can be the first few lines from the article, or you can write a short blurb that covers the main points of the news article.
An interdisciplinary team from the University of Oklahoma was recently awarded funding for their project, “Using Colormaps to Communicate Risk: An Inventory and Review of NWS Products and Visualizations with Options for the Future.” The project received a $229,836 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Angela Person, associate professor of Architecture, is co-principal investigator.
Over the past year, Dr. Bryce Lowery, associate professor of Regional + City Planning, has been working with a team of University of Oklahoma researchers to study how to best use the $36 million granted to the state of Oklahoma by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to support unhoused and housing-insecure Oklahomans. The team’s plan was recently approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, starting the process of allocating the $36 million in resources to the state of Oklahoma.
Associate Professor of Interior Design Mia Kile received the Award for Excellence in Transdisciplinary, Convergent Research, which recognizes excellence in leadership in the creation of collaborative teams of recent faculty projects. Professor Kile and her team also received the Annual Award for Excellence in Research Grants, for acquiring over $1,000,000 in grants in 2022.
The OU Data Institute for Societal Challenges has awarded $2,410.95 in seed money to support a research team that includes Shu Sun, an instructor and Ph.D. student in the Division of Landscape Architecture. The team is conducting the project “Urban Landscape: Eco-social interactions and park configurations influencing human exposure to ticks in Oklahoma City.”
Last summer, researchers at the University of Oklahoma began working with the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency to determine how to best deploy approximately $35 million to support unhoused and housing-insecure Oklahomans. Dr. Bryce Lowery, associate professor in the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, worked with Dr. David McLeod and Dr. Christina Miller in the Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work and eight graduate students to collect data to determine the best focus for this funding.
In February, OU Landscape Architecture and Regional + City Planning students worked with OSU Landscape Architecture students to host a community event in Perkins, Oklahoma. Students explored the city and engaged with residents to learn more about the small town and the design problems it faces.
In Spring 2022, Landscape Architecture students from Gibbs College collaborated with OU Rainbolt College of Education students on the design of an outdoor play and learning environment at the new Institute of Child Development. The first phase of the project was installed last summer and was recently highlighted in the winter 2023 edition of Sooner Magazine.
Angela Person, an assistant professor of Architecture, gave an invited lecture at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas on February 22, 2023. The lecture, entitled BRUTAL DC, provided an overview of Dr. Person’s upcoming exhibition of the same title at the award-winning Southern Utah Museum of Art.
A collaborative project between the University of Oklahoma and the Universidad Nacional del Altiplano in Peru (UNAP) was recently awarded a grant to investigate affordable and sustainable housing in the Andes. The project, “Inti Wasi Sustainable and Affordable Cold Climate Housing,” received funding from the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund.
Dr. Bryce Lowery, an Associate Professor of Regional and City Planning, collaborated with Dr. Madison Swayne, Dr. Iana Castro, and doctoral student Jessica Embry of San Diego State University to explore food security issues in the San Diego County area. Their work was published in Preventing Chronic Disease, a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Through a new seed funding opportunity supported by the OU Norman Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships, the OU Health Sciences Center Vice President for Research and the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, two teams will each receive up to $30,000 to support interdisciplinary research at the intersection of health, well-being, and the built environment.
A multidisciplinary team of OU researchers from the Gibbs College of Architecture and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Gallogly College of Engineering has been selected by the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) to create the Oklahoma State Housing Needs Assessment.
Dr. John Harris, Director of the OU Division of Regional + City Planning, and Dr. Firat Demir, professor of Economics at the University of Oklahoma, recently received a renewed grant from the Carnegie Corporation to continue the work of the Center for Peace and Development (CPD) and the Security in Context Network (SIC) through 2024.
Architect Tiziana Proietti and her research partner Sergei Gepshtein joined as faculty members for the 2022 Academy of Neuroscience For Architecture (ANFA) Bootcamp. Proietti is an assistant professor at the Gibbs College of Architecture and director of the Sense|Base Laboratory at OU. Sergei Gepshtein is a scientist and affiliate of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and director of the Center for Spatial Perception & Concrete Experience at the University of Southern California.
A project team of University of Oklahoma researchers and Oklahoma City civic partners are collaborating to create the Legacy Building Toolset, a digital platform that will allow community members to collectively explore identity, the meaning of place, and create and engage with community assets and more easily allow community members to participate in community collaboration projects.
Students in the University of the Oklahoma Urban Design Studio recently visited the Hispanic Heritage Festival in Tulsa’s Global District. The student conducted a visual preference survey to learn more about international travel connections in the district.
C. Aujean Lee, an Assistant Professor of Regional and City Planning at OU, was awarded a Big XII Faculty Fellowship for Spring 2023.
OU Construction Science Associate Professor Matthew Reyes and his Auburn colleague Ben Farrow recently had an article published in the International Journal of Construction Education and Research. This journal publishes original works that address current construction-related issues across the globe.
Aaron Jones, an affiliate faculty member of the Gibbs College of Architecture, recently received funding for the collaborative architecture project “Deep Space Maine.” They were awarded the SPACE: American Rescue Plan – Maine Project Grant.
Dr. C. Aujean Lee, an Assistant Professor in the Regional + City Planning Department, recently co-authored the article “Combining social network analysis and geographic information system for communication research: an application to immigrant communities” in Cogent Social Sciences.
Dr. Somik Ghosh, Associate Professor in the Haskell and Irene Lemon Division of Construction Science, recently presented his research findings at the Oklahoma Building Summit & Expo in Oklahoma City. The summit was held on September 14th and 15th and was attended by over five hundred attendees and over seventy exhibitors.
Join Gibbs College on October 3, 2022, at 4:00 p.m. in the Gould Hall Buskuhl Gallery (rm. 130), for a lecture by Dr. Matthew Cohen, AIA, titled, “Visual Training for Designers: The Cultural Dimension.”
OU Architecture faculty Dr. Stephanie Pilat and Dr. Angela Person, along with Dr. Carmina Sanchez-del-Valle of Hampton University, recently published a special edition of the architectural research journal Enquiry.
Insert a short summary of the article here, usually a few sentences long. It can be the first few lines from the article, or you can write a short blurb that covers the main points of the news article.
The Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) recently completed a year-long project sponsored by the Association for Central Oklahoma Governments (ACOG). ACOG's Community Economic Resiliency Initiative allowed the IQC to launch a new Community Engagement Fellowship, in which four Gibbs faculty members and a dozen Gibbs students provided planning services in the cities of El Reno, Guthrie, and Harrah.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma, including Dr. Bryce Lowery of the Regional and City Planning Division, are working with the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency to assess services available across the state that help Oklahomans experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity.
Dr. Wenwen Cheng, assistant professor of Landscape Architecture, was recently awarded funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to support her project titled “A Spatial Decision Support System for Identifying Heat Vulnerability Based on a Comprehensive Energy Budget Model and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis in Oklahoma City, OK,” with an amount of $149,163.
Architecture Professor Dr. Khosrow Bozorgi recently visited Tunisia. While in Tunisia, he traveled approximately 1380 miles by land and captured thousands of images of the stunning architecture of North Africa. He visited many major archaeological sites including Carthage, Kairouan, El Jem, Dougga, and Bulla Regia.
Dr. C. Aujean Lee, an Assistant Professor in the Regional + City Planning Department, recently co-authored the article, “Fintech’s relationship with subprime lending in immigrant gateway metropolitan areas,” in the Journal of Urban Affairs.
Dr. Sarah Little, an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, was recently recognized alongside her co-editors – Janet Loeback, Adina Cox, and Patsy Eubanks Owens – by the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) for their work on The Routledge Handbook of Designing Public Spaces for Young People: Process, Practices, and Policies for Youth Inclusion. The book was selected as the 2022 Honorable Mention of EDRA’s Place Book Award.
The University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) is partnering with the Kay County Healthy Living Program to host the Oklahoma Towns: Walkability and Placemaking Summit. The summit will feature workshops and speakers from Kay County and other parts of Oklahoma to highlight real-world examples of changing an environment to promote walkability and placemaking.
Dr. C. Aujean Lee recently received a grant from the NYU Furman Center’s Housing Innovation in Small and Midsize Cities program for her research proposal, “Community Land Trusts in Welcoming Cities: Building Inclusive Housing Models for Immigrants.”
The Carceral Studies Consortium offers an outstanding graduate student with an interest in advancing Carceral Studies a 12-month, .20 FTE position (8 hours per week).
Dr. Bryce Lowery, an associate professor in the Division of Regional + City Planning, is part of the University of Oklahoma Sewage Surveillance Team which recently received the Award for Excellence in Transdisciplinary, Convergent Research. This award was part of the 2022 Norman Campus Faculty Awards and Honors which were recognized during the Faculty Awards Luncheon on April 14th.
Dr. Tiziana Proietti, an assistant professor of Interior Design and Architecture, recently spoke at a Kansas State University event titled “Generators of Architectural Atmosphere.” Dr. Proietti presented the keynote talk, The Experience of Architectural Proportion Through a Scientific Perspective, in which she explored human perceptions of architectural proportion.
