By Althea Peterson
The Norman Transcript

This isn’t just another building on the University of Oklahoma’s campus.
Lee Williams, OU vice president for research and dean of the graduate college, made that clear when plans for Two Partners Place came about in 2005. After 18 months of construction, research groups will move in during the late fall to Two Partners Place-not just another building on OU’s Research Campus, but as an open facility for collaborative research.

“The idea was to build a series of builds-a neighborhood for an interactive, living campus,” Williams said.

The buildings around “David Boren Boulevard” may resemble a neighborhood of sorts. Stephenson Research Center, the National Weather Center and Ones Partners Place, which houses Weathernews and Vieux and Associates, already accommodate many research opportunities at OU. Williams said Two Partners Place will complement these facilities with new research projects, including education group K20, the Center for Spatial Analysis and the Applied Social Research group.

May Yuen, director of the Center for Spatial Analysis and geography professor, said having several research groups located at the same facility area will promote new projects.

“We used to have to negotiate where to meet,” Yuen said. “Now when we’re in the same building, we can sit down and have coffee together.”

Yuen said geographic research focuses on physical characteristics of people and the environment, such as settlements, climate and land use. However, she said it is important also to include social variables in researching geography, such as communication and media, which is where cooperative research comes in.

“Who plays a major role in risk communicated to the general public?” Yuen said. “What I want to do is put that into a geographic context.”

Another side of social research is education. Mary John O’Hair, director of K20 and education professor, said OU is focused on helping K-12 programs with science and math. This cooperation inspired the name “K20”, referring to education beyond a K-12 level.
“Our work is about beginning school and university partnerships,” O’Hair said. “We consider it very important to work with K-12 at the university level.”

O’Hair said this relates to social and scientific research, because statistics show that K-12 math and science programs need more attention. To improve education, she said it is important to establish her group within an area of scientific research.

“It makes sense to be where the research goes on,” O’Hair said. “We want schools to begin to see these geographic spatial relationships.”

While immediate goals are to improve education in Oklahoma, overall research for all groups will also focus on a global scale, Williams said.

“This is the world our students are going into,” Williams said. “If we give our students exposure to that type of environment, it gives them a world view. We want the visionaries, the innovators. We want our students to be world and civic leaders.”

Interest for Three Partners Place is already coming in from various companies who have seen the success of One Partners Place, Williams said. However, Two Partners Place is still months away and Yuen said he cannot wait to move into the new facility.

“I’m really excited at the opportunity,” Yuen said. “I’m grateful that I’m part of a new development. Step by step, we are headed in the right direction. One day, we will go out and be proud that we invested in this.”