OU alum Kris Glenn thought he would spend his career working in public relations and marketing.
Twenty years later, Glenn serves as director of OU Parking and Transportation Services where he manages university parking, shuttles and vehicle fleets.
Surrounded by signed music posters and sports memorabilia in his office, Glenn recalled his initial career plans and how he became OU’s parking director.
In college, Glenn majored in journalism and worked at the OU Daily from 2002-2003 as a news reporter. Through journalism, he discovered his passion for marketing and public relations.
“I really enjoyed writing a feature story on something that was positive,” Glenn said. “I realized that you could really do that with marketing and public relations.”
As he neared graduation, Glenn realized he wanted to stay in Norman.
“I loved OU so much I started looking for jobs at OU,” Glenn said. “It just so happened that the marketing PR job in this department came open.”
Glenn became the marketing and public relations specialist for the parking department after graduating from the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2005. He was the first to fill the newly established role.
“I was 24 years old — right out of college at the time,” Glenn said. “I had a lot of ideas and a lot of energy.”
As the marketing and public relations specialist, Glenn maintained department websites, ran marketing campaigns and sold advertisements on shuttles.
Glenn worked in the position for about five years before accepting a job offer from KREF, a sports radio station serving the Oklahoma City metro area. Glenn became the station’s account executive and sold radio advertising. After a year at KREF, Glenn became the general sales manager for Tyler Outdoor Advertising Company where he ran the sales division of the company’s billboards.
In 2015, Glenn returned to OU as the digital innovations strategist.
“I had a parking background and there was a lot of technology starting to come into parking,” Glenn said. “Our vice president was like, ‘You’ve got a parking background. I want you working on these technology projects. I want you to take whatever technology is the latest, greatest in parking and try to implement it on this campus.’”
It was in this role that Glenn implemented lights in two campus parking garages to indicate whether a space is open. He said this was the first light system of its kind in Oklahoma.
“Ten years ago, that was very innovative,” Glenn said.
In July 2017, Glenn received an email telling him that the parking director at the time, Doug Myers, was going to move from overseeing both the Norman and Health campuses to only working for the Health campus.
“I think that the administration just thought that was too much for one person,” Glenn said.
Glenn was offered the role of parking director for OU’s Norman campus.
“It was an immediate yes,” Glenn said. “It was a position that I’d always held in a really high regard.”
Susan Coldwater, manager of operations for Campus Area Rapid Transit, said Glenn doesn’t micromanage her work.
“Kris is great to work with,” Coldwater said. “He stays involved but he’s not one that looks over your shoulder and tries to put his finger on everything.”
Now, Glenn works with department leaders and staff across campus. He said his daily responsibilities vary from monitoring current parking numbers to handling football parking plans.
“There’s never a typical day,” Glenn said. “It’s just a lot of communication about what we do.”
Glenn said the university’s switch from the Big 12 Conference to the Southeastern Conference has brought higher parking numbers during football season.
“There’s more people that come from out of town from other teams. There’s more people who come just for the weekend. … And then there’s more special events,” Glenn said. “There’s just more demand on our parking resources, our lots and our staff. So it’s exciting, but it is definitely a lot of work.”
The parking and transportation department has seen another recent change: virtual parking passes.
Starting this semester, parking services issued virtual passes for students that work by scanning license plates to enforce parking regulations.
Glenn said OU was the last school in the SEC to make the switch from parking officers on foot to license plate readers.
“The timing was right,” Glenn said. “It’s been a really smooth transition.”
Glenn said the virtual passes have increased efficiency for both staff and students. He said the passes allow parking officers to scan license plates from a vehicle rather than having an officer check individual permits on foot. The switch has kept students from waiting to pick up or receive physical passes, according to Glenn.
Managing parking at peak hours
OU currently has 3,638 commuter parking spaces, Glenn said. The university sold 7,851 commuter passes for the 2025-26 school year, according to Glenn.
Glenn said that despite this difference, the numbers aren’t what matters when it comes to parking.
“I’ll state the obvious, a lot of people get hung up on how many spaces we have and how many permits we sell,” Glenn said. “To me, that’s not really important. What I look at is how many cars are in the parking lots at the most peak times.”
Glenn said 10-11 a.m. is the most challenging time for parking.
“Even with that number of permits sold versus spaces, that one hour is the only challenge we have,” Glenn said. “But there’s still spaces out there.”
Though his office sold 200 fewer parking permits this school year compared to last, Glenn said the first-year class has created a “domino effect.”
OU’s class of 2029 is the largest first-year class in state history with 6,251 students, breaking the university’s enrollment record for the fifth-consecutive year.
“This semester has been challenging. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that it hasn’t,” Glenn said. “We were going to open more commuter parking than last year, but because of the large freshman class, we weren’t able to do that.”
Glenn said his department will be adding parking for the next academic year.
“There’s no way around it whenever our freshman classes continue to grow,” Glenn said. “We will add parking until it makes sense because we have to keep up with the demand. … I wouldn’t be doing my job if we just did nothing.”
Glenn said added parking will likely be a surface lot, rather than a parking garage.
“It’s $30,000 a space to build (a garage) versus $5,000 a space to build a surface parking lot, …” Glenn said. “I know that before next year, or even the following year, we wouldn’t have the time or the money to put up a new parking garage. However, we are looking at areas where we can build more surface parking.”
Glenn noted parking opportunities at Lloyd Noble Center and said the shuttle service is a great resource.
“We’re one of the few schools that still has a free park-and-ride shuttle system. A lot of schools charge for that service,” Glenn said. “There’s literally no way that the campus could operate without that shuttle, because if you had 4,000 more cars trying to park on campus, it would be pure chaos. Those shuttles are vital to what we do.”
Public perception
Glenn said the parking directors of other SEC schools deal with the same reputation he does.
“We’re not the most popular department and we know that,” Glenn said. “That’s just the way that the people view parking on college campuses. … It’s no different in Arkansas than it is here than it is in Alabama.”
Gary Epperson, manager of OU parking services, said Glenn handles criticism well.
“He never shies away from any complaints or questions or suggestions,” Epperson said. “He wants to do everything he can to help the students and the staff find parking.”
Despite public opinions of OU parking, Glenn said his hope for his department is to serve students and staff in a professional and caring manner.
“I’ve been accused many times of being the most lenient parking director in OU history, and I’m fine with that title,” Glenn said. “I believe in a lot of leniency and a lot of grace.”
Epperson said Glenn differentiates himself from other leaders with his attitude toward staff.
“Any time any of our staff has had any kind of family issues, mental health issues, any kind of health issues at all, usually his first response is, ‘Take all the time you need.’ And he means that,” Epperson said. “With the dynamics of parking and some of the abuse that comes through, that’s hugely important to have in a director — somebody that’s sensitive to those things.”
Glenn said people have felt the same about OU parking for decades.
“The opinion of parking here hasn’t changed since my mom went to school here in the ’70s,” Glenn said. “When I was a student here, there was a lot more available parking than there is now, and people still complained. So you know it’s just the nature of it.”
Glenn said working in the department for so long has helped him deal with the criticism he faces.
“I grew up in this department,” Glenn said. “I don’t take it personally. … I get it. It’s a hot button issue on any college campus.”
This story was edited by Anusha Fathepure, Ana Barboza and Thomas Pablo. Hannah Lambert, Avery Avery and Mary Ann Livingood copy edited this story.
