Chuck Connerly joined the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning in 2008 as professor and director, and founded the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities in 2009.  His research has been published in top journals, including the Journal of the American Planning Association, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, the Journal of Planning Literature, Housing Studies, the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of Planning History, and Urban Affairs Quarterly. He authored a book published by the University of Virginia Press, The Most Segregated City in America: City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980 (2005) and most recently co-edited Growth Management in Florida: Planning for Paradise, published by Ashgate Publishing in 2007.

The Most Segregated City was named one of the top 10 planning books in 2006 by Planetizen. In 2007 the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning named the book a recipient of the Paul Davidoff Award, which recognizes an outstanding book publication promoting participatory planning and positive social change, opposing poverty and racism as factors in society and seeking ways to reduce disparities between rich and poor; white and black; men and women. For five years he co-edited the Journal of Planning Education and Research and for nine years he co-edited Housing Studies.

In 2011-2013, Chuck served as President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, the national learned society of planning schools, faculty, and students in the US. His current project is a book, Prairie State Sustainability, which is an assessment (part history, part contemporary analysis) of Iowa's sustainability challenges and responses, and which builds on Connerly's work with the community engagement initiative of which he is the principal founder, the UI Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities (http://iisc.uiowa.edu/ ). In 2015, he received the Michael J. Brody award for faculty service at the University of Iowa.