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OU Construction Science Professor Bryan Bloom received the Provost’s Award for Outstanding Engaged Teaching. This award recognizes faculty that utilize innovative teaching techniques that promote community collaboration and high-quality, engaged learning. According to Ben Bigelow, “Professor Bloom’s passion is community engagement as a vehicle for giving students an unmatched learning experience. He has sustained his work for five years and, despite the additional time and pressure created by these projects, he persists.”
Since Professor Bloom joined as an OU faculty member, he has continued to develop Gibbs College’s “Design + Build” program. This program gives students hands-on experiences and real-world applications of their classroom knowledge. Over the past five years, his students have participated in a wide range of community projects, including an off-grid greenhouse for a school in Oklahoma City, and a mobile medical unit for the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
Dean Butzer praised Professor Bloom for his work: “[He] models transdisciplinary leadership and reciprocity, while also teaching construction best practices to our students. To accomplish this, he brings together key partners, including community members to inform project planning, architects or design faculty to conceptualize the designs, investors and philanthropists to fund the projects, and students to construct the projects.”
Congratulations to Professor Bloom for this well-deserved recognition!
Featured Image: Pictured from left to right, Jerry Puckett, Bryan Bloom and Ken Marold in front of a mobile medical unit, a previous Design+Build Project.
Gibbs College is pleased to present the exhibition Vollendorf in Oklahoma: The Architecture of Dean Bryant Vollendorf during the Spring 2025 semester. It will be on display in Gould Hall, on the OU-Norman Campus, from February 16, 2026 - March 13, 2026.
On November 21, 2025, the Mainsite Contemporary Art gallery was transformed into a showcase of innovation and craftsmanship for the University of Oklahoma’s furniture design build studio exhibition, “Purpose in Form.”
Associate Professors Lee Fithian, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Pober have published a chapter in the recently released New Perspectives in Indoor Air Quality, published by Elsevier. Their contribution, titled “Chapter 16 – Architecture and the Challenges of Indoor Air Quality,” examines the relationship between architecture and indoor air quality.
