With cooperative attitudes, resourcefulness, and strong networks, many people in small towns have good ideas about sustainable living. After all, their very livelihood may depend on the sustainability of their small community.

Despite this, Robyn Fennig believes small towns tend to be forgotten in the big picture of community planning.

That’s where Fennig and other graduate students in the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning can help. By working with these small towns, they are able to explore real-world applications of what they’re studying in the classroom.

In Fennig’s case, she served as an emergency management intern for the Cedar County Emergency Management Agency during the 2011-12 academic year.

She assisted the county in understanding revisions made by FEMA to its flood map—a much-needed project after the 2008 flood—while also working with the towns of Clarence and Mechanicsville to become participants in the National Flood Insurance Program.

“It’s exciting to come in as a planning student, because (our clients) are excited to have that additional help and excited to see some of these new ideas,” Fennig says. “They’re excited about the energy, we as young planners, are bringing to these communities. It gives us a lesson in how to deal with changing communities, too.

“As sustainability becomes incorporated, people are trying to have healthier economies, healthier environments and be more socially equitable in their communities. It’s given us students the chance to frame our ideas in a way that helps promote what a community wants.”

Fennig’s interests include emergency and hazard mitigation planning, economic development, and land use and environmental planning. Fennig earned her master’s degree in May and has begun working as a hazard mitigation planner for Wisconsin Emergency Management in Madison, Wis.

Wisconsin Emergency Management coordinates effective disaster response and recovery efforts in support of local governments.

“This is my dream job,” says Fennig, who, in summer 2011, was an intern for the Bureau of Response and Recovery at Wisconsin Emergency Management, where she developed her interest in hazard mitigation planning, recovery planning, and emergency management.

Fennig brings an impressive set of credentials with her to Wisconsin Emergency Management.

The UI School of Urban and Regional Planning presented Fennig with the annual American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Outstanding Student Award.

As the American Planning Association (APA) Region IV student representative, Fennig developed career training opportunities for students and contributed to the development of an AICP student mentoring program. She also was a student representative for the Regional and Intergovernmental Planning Division of APA and served on the Membership Development Committee of the Iowa APA chapter.

“Robyn is very motivated to be the best,” says Chuck Connerly, director of the UI School of Urban and Regional Planning. “She has this drive and this motivation. She pushes herself all the time.”

Fennig made valuable contributions to the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities, the School of Urban and Regional Planning’s capstone project that gives students direct field experience. In this year-long course, students work with city administrators to solve real problems in Iowa municipalities.

Her group identified and mapped assets and conducted feasibility and policy analyses for distributed renewable energy production in Dubuque. The results of this innovative project were presented to the Board of Regents, State of Iowa, in June and at the National APA Conference in Los Angeles in April. This is the first time a UI student capstone project has been presented at the National APA Conference.

“One of our goals was to turn this project into something that could be replicated elsewhere,” Fennig says. “It’s a ground-breaking project. This is the first comprehensive study of this kind.”

For Fennig, incorporating renewable energy into city planning is about community resiliency.

“It’s about decreasing the vulnerability to outside oil dependence and energy dependence,” Fennig says. “Importing energy makes your economy more resilient and it makes your community more resilient to natural hazards.”