Faculty Spotlight > Dr. Linda Thomas-Mobley

 

In her new role as Associate Director of the Building Construction (BC) Program, Dr. Linda Thomas-Mobley will be balancing the demands of teaching, administration and advising – no small feat for a program that’s more than tripled its enrollment over the past decade.

But for Dr. Thomas-Mobley, the rewards far outweigh the challenges.

“I took this position for the same reasons I got into teaching – I wanted to make a difference,” she said. “I feel like I can make a valuable contribution here and I’m looking forward to help BC continue to grow and improve.”

In May, Dr. Thomas-Mobley was appointed by the Provost and Dean as the Associate Director of the BC Program. In this position, she assists BC Director Dr. Roozbeh Kangari on administrative issues, such as supervising part-time faculty, and serves as director of graduate studies. She also continues to teach undergraduate and graduate classes in Construction Contracts, and Safety and Environmental Issues. 

Her main objectives are to increase the amount of scholarly research produced by department faculty and graduate students, and to grow the size and reputation of the BC’s master’s program, which reached record enrollment this fall with 101 students.

Dr. Thomas-Mobley, a leading expert on the indoor environment (IE), has high expectations for her own research, which has been used by the General Services Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to guide federal indoor air policy. In her work, Thomas-Mobley provides recommendations on building construction practices and maintenance and operation procedures to prevent or minimize the occurrence of contaminants and provide acceptable Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) for building occupants. She hopes her reports will help change the course of how buildings are designed, operated and maintained. The expectation is to re-define the future direction of the construction industry.

“We’ve been doing things in construction without critical examination for so many years simply because it’s the way things have always been done,” said Thomas-Mobley.

“But I believe we will never be true professionals until we put science behind what we do.”

In her efforts to promote this research initiative, Dr. Thomas-Mobley recently served as chair of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) COBRA 2007 Conference. Considered one of the premier academic conferences for scholars in the built environment, the COBRA Conference was held for the first time in the United State on Tech’s campus in September. Dr. Thomas-Mobley also serves on RICS’ COBRA Advisory Board. She has been invited to speak in the U.S., Europe and Asia about her research. In addition, she was appointed by the National Academies to serve on a national research committee to study immune buildings. The committee assisted the National Academies’ Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology (BCST) undertake a study on immune buildings sponsored by the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

Dr. Thomas joined the Building Construction Program in the College of Architecture (COA) as an instructor during the fall of 1997.  Immediately prior to this, she led the team that was responsible for approximately $30 million worth of design, construction and disposal of temporary facilities and supporting infrastructure for the Atlanta Olympic Village in 1996.  In addition to a distinguished career as an officer in the U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps, Dr. Thomas-Mobley has practiced construction law and business litigation since 1992. 

She holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Civil Engineering; a Master’s of Science in Civil Engineering; a Juris Doctorate (Law) cum laude; and a Ph.D. in Architecture.  Dr. Thomas-Mobley is the first person to graduate from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in the Building Construction track from the College of Architecture. She obtained her Ph.D. in August 2000, focusing on the flourishing multi-disciplinary area of Management of the Indoor Environment.