GCA Communications intern Kathlyn Dannewald (K) spoke with Purvi Patel (P), a Regional + City Planning Alumna here at Gibbs! We sat down with Patel to learn about her experiences with the RCPL program as an international student, and her exciting career in the city planning industry. Read on for highlights or click the link below to access the full podcast.
K: Hello, everyone, welcome to the Gibbs Spotlight. My name is Kathlyn Dannewald, and I’m a Communications intern at the Gibbs College of Architecture. Today we are speaking with Purvi Patel, an alumna of the Regional + City Planning program. Purvi is currently a land planner with the Wallace Design Collective in Oklahoma City, and recently joined the Regional + City Planning Professional Advisory Board here at Gibbs.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Purvi! To start, can you share a little bit about your background and what brought you to OU?
P: Yep. Good morning and thank you for interviewing me today. I appreciate the opportunity. I grew up in Zambia. I was born in London but grew up in Zambia. Then for further education, I had to find a university to go to, so I only had visited the United States and I started off at a community college in Southern Georgia. After finishing my associate’s degree there, I applied to several universities, and OU was one of them.
And it was the one university where I didn’t have family members, so that meant I could attend and get to build my own American dream and experience a true university campus on my own. And so that was one of the biggest factors, as well as OU being an accredited program. They had just won the national championship the year I applied, so that was definitely a bonus as well.
K: I totally get that. I also went to school away from my family, because I was like, ‘I’m not going to the school my parents went to. I want to be out on my own.’ But also I was like, ‘I need to go to a football school.’ Thanks for sharing that. What attracted you to the field of City Planning? You were here for your undergraduate, right, and then continued for planning?
P: Yes, so I got my undergraduate degree in architecture, and in my fifth year, I knew I wanted to get my master’s. I just wasn’t sure which direction I was going to go in. I had the opportunity to go on a class trip to China with Dr. Shen from the RCPL program, and that was the biggest influence in changing my direction and education, as well as my career path.
We visited a lot of offices, and I got to speak with Dr. Shen, as well as our local tour guide there about just the way the cities that we visited in China had planned around making sure that it wasn’t just the vehicles that were important, but also the pedestrian experience. It was all just planned around people, and that really was interesting to me. Then once I got into the program, the land-use side of it was something that really piqued my interest, and still does.
K: Yeah, that’s so interesting. I’m not in RCPL, but I take a bunch of city-planning classes because I’m hoping to go into it. But it’s so interesting to see all the decisions that go into making the world around us that you never would have even known about.
P: Exactly. Things you don’t think about that are in the back of your mind. Everything from site planning, zoning, and environmental justice. There’s just a lot of opportunities through the RCPL program.
K: Yeah, amazing. And that trip sounds awesome! To do a school trip somewhere that cool is amazing.
P: Absolutely.
K: What was your experience like at OU as an international student? Both as an undergraduate and graduate.
P: I think as an undergrad, I was still learning the ropes, but coming into my graduate program, I was a little more confident. I knew the campus a little bit better, so I could stride in just like any other student. But I think the experience for me was – I had to find, especially in the Gibbs College, students outside of there, because there weren’t very many international students.
But many of the people that I did go to school with from my graduating class in the architecture program, as well as RCPL program, we’re still best friends. And a lot of those friends helped me out when I didn’t have a vehicle. We would have to go out to buy materials for architecture programs. So those little things that they did for you, stay with you.
Then also, I didn’t take advantage of a lot of what the international office had to offer because the architecture program did consume my life for five years. But coming into RCPL program, the one thing that stood out to me was they had a scholarship program that was open to an international student to apply.
A lot of the other programs or scholarships I looked at, in my undergrad, an international student would not qualify for. Fees are the biggest setback, I would say, as an international student. We had to pay a lot of money to go to school, so any little thing would help out. So being able to apply for the scholarship and get it, the one year I did apply for it, was very helpful.
The professors helped as well in the RCPL program. I had Charlie Warnken go above and beyond in my architecture program, too. We had several professors that did help a lot as well.
K: So awesome. It’s good to hear other people having great experiences.
P: Yeah, absolutely.
K: So, could you share a little bit about your career path after graduating from the City Planning Program? Where have you worked?
P: Yeah. So after graduating from the RCPL program, I moved to St. Louis, right during the 2008 recession. I had a hard time finding a job, but I think about eight months later, I took on an internship with a city called Chesterfield. It’s a suburb of St. Louis and was able to then turn that into a full-time position with them. I worked with them for about six years total and then went into the private sector to help out as a regional manager for a hotel group overlooking their renovations, new constructions, and help them through city permitting processes and so forth.
I had some life changing experiences that brought me back to Oklahoma and between the private sector, public sector, at that time, I was ready to go back into the public sector and accepted a job with the city of Choctaw as their city planner, and then was promoted within a year to be the Director of Development Services.
And six or seven months ago, I was approached by Wallace Design Collective, to see if I would be interested in joining them to be their only land planner in the Oklahoma City office. And it just, you know, I still got to be involved in the land use side of things. But I get to work with an array of cities versus just one. So, I joined them in August, and it’s been pretty exciting since then.
K: Awesome. How do you think the regional and city planning program helped prepare you for that career?
P: I think the classes that we take, what we learned, and being able to work on a comprehensive plan for a smaller community near Norman. So, getting those real hands-on experiences. We had transportation planners who were in the field coming in to teach us those classes. For me, being in the public sector, knowing a lot of the land use law, the land use history. That kind of helped being able to reference some codes and carry on conversations.
And in a smaller city, you wear a lot of hats, so I was able to communicate with the city attorney quite often and look at older cases and bring up examples to see how we can navigate some sticky situations that we may have seen. They also had a very old code; it was from 1974, so trying to apply a 1974 code to 2020-2021 standard was hard, but it was always fun.
K: I’ve been looking at planning jobs, and the small cities are so intimidating because you’re the only person or there’s two other people in the planning office. You have to be prepared to do a bunch of stuff.
P: That is true, but I also learned a lot more in the smaller city. Coming from a big city like Chesterfield, the floodplain was handled by the engineering department. We had authorities for public water and sewer. So you didn’t get to learn much in it, except for just very little communications you would have.
Coming into Choctaw, I know a lot about public water, sewer systems, roads, and how those work and how the funding works. So, I think the experience you gain from working in a smaller city is valuable.
K: Kind of building on that, do you have any advice for planning students who are maybe looking to graduate soon?
P: Absolutely. Getting in and getting an internship early. I was an international student and in my master’s were my last two summers that I got to go home for an extended period of time, and I took advantage of that. However, I do wish when I graduated, I’d taken an internship versus travel those summers, but we live and learn. So I think that too.
I’m new to the visitors board, and I’ve had several students reach out to me. Just keeping that communication open or reaching out to some of the alumni because it helps you get to learn and hear from their experiences, then it also opens possible job opportunities in the future. Pay attention in your classes, it will be helpful.
K: Definitely. And you kind of mentioned some things earlier, but do you have any specific advice for international students who are in the RCPL program right now or are looking to get into it?
P: Yeah, absolutely. Join the program. I believe the program is small enough that you get your attention. They’re sensitive to some of the constraints we have, versus the larger programs that you would go into as an international student. And I think in that program, your fellow students and faculty become your family.
I graduated in 2009, so it’s been almost 13 years this year, and we are still friends with all of those folks. And then when I came back into the private sector, and I started messaging people in different cities, and I went to school with them. So it’s nice to have that connection as well.
As an international student, it also affects if you plan on going back to your home country, or if you plan on staying in the United States. I think all of those play factors into it, like if you plan on staying, have an internship lined up. That one year of OPT (Optional Practice Training) that you get, having a job lined up for it is absolutely essential.
K: Awesome. Well, that’s all the questions I have for you today. Is there anything else you wanted to share?
P: No, I’m just glad to see both the architecture program and RCPL program have grown since we’ve been there. And the new building, the new building excites me so much. I went to school the last year in the old Gould Hall and the old Hobby Lobby building.
K: I heard about that. I didn’t know about the Hobby Lobby building. That must have been a crazy time to be at Gibbs.
P: It was exciting. You had to commute between campus and the building for your classes. It’s just really exciting to see where the program is going. And I know RCPL program just got recently reaccredited, so there’s a little pride in that as well, knowing that you came from that school, and that’s where your ties are. I would tell anyone who’s thinking about attending the RCPL program or even the architecture school, international or not, it’s an absolutely great program to be in.
K: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today and taking the time to be on the Gibbs Spotlight. I appreciate you sharing your time.
P: I appreciate the opportunity.
K: Thanks again for listening to the Gibbs Spotlight. Tune in next time to hear more stories from the Gibbs College of architecture.
This transcript thas been edited for clarity and length.