Southeast Texas
LAND 311: Students took on two Port Arthur spaces - one of the city's largest water pump stations (Halbouty Pump Station) and Pleasure Island, a former golf course resort. Students looked into secondary uses for one of Port Arthur's strongest pump stations and visualized restoration of the city's once well-attended Pleasure Island. The presentations sparked excitement among community members, who praised the students' innovative ideas and fresh perspectives, saying, "Really neat to see the work, and they stimulated new ideas. Bravo," while another shared that the presentation was "the best part of my Friday."
The Southeast Texas Urban Integrated Field Lab (SETx-UIFL) is one of four Urban Integrated Field Labs awarded by the Biological and Environmental Research Program within the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy. Our lab focuses on the Southeast Texas region and collaborates with researchers and experts from Lamar University, The University of Texas at Austin, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We aim to better understand the current and future impacts of flooding and air pollution in Southeast Texas and the broader Gulf Coast region. We pursue this by combining measurements, modeling, and community experiences to co-develop applicable and equitable adaptation strategies with local partners. The goals of SETx-UIFL are to provide a quantitative understanding of projected climate change impacts across Southeast Texas that can inform other regions and to improve the practice of resilience science and community resilience through developing new, generalizable theories of change validated in our region. We aim to bridge scientific inquiry with actionable solutions that are meaningful both locally and in other climate-vulnerable areas. In the short term, we are working to integrate new data, methods, and models that capture the interactions among natural, human-built, and social systems. We seek to deepen our understanding of the interdependencies, mutual benefits, and trade-offs between human wellbeing and environmental outcomes. Central to this effort is the coproduction of knowledge with stakeholders, ensuring that the insights we generate are informed by and useful to the communities most affected.
LAND 621: Our students in the Master’s of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning program worked diligently on the Designing for Floods, Air Quality, and Safety in Port Arthur, TX project. LAND 621 addressed those issues by uniting with local stakeholders to develop innovative, nature-based strategies that enhance public health, environmental resilience, and community well-being. Through collaborative engagement with leaders, we aimed to create solutions that authentically reflect the city’s needs, values, and aspirations. In Spring 2025, Larry Baddon (Planning and Development Services Manager), Aries Milo (Senior Planner), and Phillip Villardi (Chief Building Official) played an integral role in chaperoning and validating students' ideas throughout Port Arthur. In May, students held their final projects highlighting strengths and opportunities around hazard mitigation for Port Arthur. Thank you to the Port Arthur Planning team for welcoming us and collaborating with our program.
The Summer Institute brings together researchers from SETx-UIFL to collaborate and advance research on environmental hazards in the Southeast Texas region. Teams share data and explore innovative ways to push the work forward. This year, we wrapped up the sessions with a hands-on actor mapping exercise that helped identify who’s at the table and who’s missing, when it comes to tackling real community challenges. Together, the researchers mapped out community members and stakeholders to surface the local knowledge connected to our field lab, as well as the gaps that remain.
Summer Institute 2025
PLAN 661: Students in Communications in Planning led a semester-long engagement initiative in Port Arthur, Texas, in support of the SETx-UIFL. The student team engaged residents to better understand community concerns and priorities related to climate adaptation, quality of life, and redevelopment opportunities on Pleasure Island. They developed a Social Pinpoint website featuring an introductory video, idea wall, and a multilingual survey to support broad participation. To deepen outreach, they organized seven pop-up events at key locations across Port Arthur, including Woodrow Wilson Early College High School, City Hall, the Courthouse, Gulf Coast Health Center, Empowerment Church, the YMCA, and Central Mall. These events captured input from a wide range of residents across ages, income levels, and cultural backgrounds.
The project concluded with a virtual public presentation and a detailed engagement report outlining community priorities and some recommendations. Community feedback showed the need for safer infrastructure, stronger flood mitigation efforts, more community-focused spaces, and clearer communication from public agencies. Students also offered suggestions to improve data collection, refine survey design, and strengthen outreach strategies for future engagement efforts. These findings and recommendations helped the broader research team and the City stakeholders understand community needs for future efforts.
“Texas Target Communities (TxTC) was not simply a logistical partner—it was the intellectual and ethical backbone of the Port Arthur engagement. TxTC’s long-standing relationships in the region and its institutional credibility enabled the project to move beyond one-off consultation into the realm of sustained, reciprocal collaboration. As an intermediary, TxTC provided students and faculty with a scaffold to engage responsibly and avoid parachute planning. In my view, TxTC’s most vital contribution was in setting the tone for equitable engagement: ensuring that we entered communities with humility, made space for local leadership, and designed tools that met residents where they were—linguistically, culturally, and spatially.” - Ivis Garcia
Congrats to our MUP Class of 2025!
Award Recognition
Our project, Listening to Port Arthur: Community Insights for a Resilient Future, was selected as the Winner in the Student Project category by the American Planning Association Texas Chapter (APATX). This prestigious recognition highlights the collaborative efforts of our team and the impactful work conducted with the Port Arthur community.
Faculty & Staff: Cedric Shy, Jeewasmi Thapa, Sungmin Lee, Ivis Garcia, Sungju Jung
Students: Aseel Ahmad, Mario Gomez, Emily Moon, Abel Mejia, Rone Fajkus, Mariah Persyn, Kaylee Ngitit, Lydia Wenzel, Isabel Ortiz, Zachary Cochran, Deanna Nicholson, Margo Payton, Brynn West, Julie Lomax, Alex Nicol, Catherine Seymour, Aimee Jao, Jackeline Valadez, Benjamin Campos, Daniel Vasquez, Chance Bonnett, Sydney Taylor, Emma Mattingly, Caden Smith, Ashlyn Persyn, Ethan Hoermann, Kaitlyn Acosta, Trinity Phan, Madison Hesser, Ashlyn Hawk, Nydia Brito, Colby Rader, Ryan Triebel, Colin Phung, Junzhe Shi, Brennan Boyd, Courtney Morgan, Adam Sieracki, Kate Thompson, Oscar Rios, Gabby King, Han Wu, Caroline Jurecka, Esai Mata, William Allen, Angkita Hawlader, Inseo Park, Beatriz Watanabe, Shiyun Wen, Julianne Birdsall, Carissa Hecker, Pengchao Wang, Gabe Ural, Jacob Vaught, Parker Weinbaum, Windya Welideniya, Yiyang Xia, Rebekah Annan, Jacquelyn Bailey, Jenna Beyer, Yaohao Chen, Faith Jacob, Gwendolyn Jones, Zach Lawton, Preston Loper
SETx-UIFL Team
Leads
- Paola Passalacqua – UT Austin
- Michelle Meyer – Texas A&M
- Liv Haselbach – Lamar University
- Noel Estwick – Prairie View A&M University
- Ethan Coon – Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Geeta Persad – UT Austin
- Sidney Lin – Lamar University
- Katherine Lieberknecht – UT Austin
- Suzanne Pierce – UT Austin
Co-PIs
- Fernanda Leite – UT Austin
- Ethan Coon – Oak Ridge
- Christina Brelsford – Los Alamos & Oak Ridge
- Benjamin Sulman – Oak Ridge
- Philipe Ambrozio Dias – Oak Ridge
- Phong Le – Oak Ridge
- Saubhagya Rathore – Oak Ridge
- Qin Qian – Lamar
- Nicholas Brake – Lamar
- Matthew Hoch – Lamar
- Tianxing Cai – Lamar
- Clayton Jeffryes – Lamar
- Pawel Misztal – UT Austin
- Elena McDonald-Buller – UT Austin
- Kerry Kinney – UT Austin
- Yosuke Kimura – UT Austin
- Kasey Faust – UT Austin
- Patrick Bixler – UT Austin
- Dongying Li – Texas A&M
- Jaimie Hicks Masterson – Texas A&M
- Nathanael Rosenheim – Texas A&M
- Galen Newman – Texas A&M
- Siyu Yu – Texas A&M
- Jeewasmi Thapa – Texas A&M
- William Mobley – UT Austin
Other Roles
- Debvrat Varshney – Postdoctoral Researcher
- Chih-Shen Cheng – Postdoctoral Researcher
- Kacper Przykaza – Postdoctoral Researcher
- Juan P. Maestre – Managing Director, UT Austin
- Dat Phan – Grant Manager, Lamar University
- Seth Jordan – Program Coordinator, Texas A&M
- Cedric Shy – Program Coordinator, Texas A&M