Michail Fragkias, assistant professor in the Department of Economics, and Susan Mason, an associate professor from the Department of Community and Regional Planning, co-authored a research paper that Susan Mason presented at the Urban Affairs Association Conference March 16-19 in San Diego, California. Their research paper, “Mental Models and the Robustness of Institutions: Do they Influence Metropolitan Planning Organizations Involvement in Climate Change Policy?” analyzes the involvement of U.S. metropolitan planning organizations in climate change. The authors investigated the structural impact of mental models and robustness of the organizations in their engagement on climate change policy. They found the importance of robustness to be mixed but mental models on climate change played a significant role in involvement in climate change policy, in particular, the perceived degree of concern about climate change issues within an organization and the belief in the anthropogenic nature of climate change predicted engagement in climate change policy.