Faculty
Joan Fitzgerald
Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University
Interim Dean, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs
Director and Professor, Law and Public Policy Program
Expertise: Urban and State Economic Development, Urban Sustainability and Climate Change Policy and Planning, Workforce Development
Email: jo.fitzgerald@neu.edu
Len Albright
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Assistant Professor, Sociology & Public Policy
Expertise: Urban Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Affordable Housing, Inequality, Qualitative Methods, the Suburbs, Social Theory, Coastal Communities
Email: l.albright@neu.edu
Judith Barr
Sc.D., Harvard University
ME.d., University of Massachusetts, Boston
Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice
Expertise: Health policy and evaluation, Patient-centered outcome assessment, Pharmacoeconomics, Assessment of teaching and learning
Email: j.barr@neu.edu
Barry Bluestone
Ph.D., Economics, University of Michigan
Director, Dukakis Center for Urban & Regional Policy
Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy
Expertise: Housing, Economic Development, Labor Economics, Public Policy
Email: b.bluestone@neu.edu
Christopher J. Bosso
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Director, Nanotechnology & Society Research Group
Professor of Public Policy
Expertise: Public Policy, Environmental Policy, Technology and Policy
Email: c.bosso@neu.edu
Nonnie Burnes
J.D., Northeastern University
Senior University Fellow, Northeastern University
Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Insurance
Former Superior Court Judge
Expertise: Government regulation, Insurance, Judicial System
Email: n.burnes@neu.edu
Ballard Campbell
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin
Professor of History, Law and Public Policy,
OAH Distinguished Leader
Expertise: History of American Public Policy, Federalism, Research Methods
Email: b.campbell@neu.edu
Alan Clayton-Matthews
Ph.D., Boston College
Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy
Senior Research Associate, Dukakis Center for Urban & Regional Policy
Expertise: Research Methods, Statistics, Public Finance
Email: a.clayton-matthews@neu.edu
James Connolly
Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Columbia University
Assistant Professor, Public Policy & Political Science
Expertise: Urban Environmental Planning and Policy, Environmental Stewardship, Spatial Dynamics of Poverty, Geographic Information Services (GIS), Organizational Networks
Email: j.connolly@neu.edu
Richard Daynard
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor of Law; Public Policy
Expertise: Products Liability, Psychiatry and Law, Litigative Strategies
Email: r.daynard@neu.edu
Stephanie DeCandia
J.D., Northeastern University School of Law
Lecturer
Expertise: Sexual Assault Related Legal Issues, Rape Crisis Intervention Counseling, Policy Development and, Legislative Advocacy.
Email:S.Decandia@neu.edu, SDecandia@barcc.org
William Dickens
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distinguished Professor of Economics & Social Policy
Expertise: Macroeconomics, Monetary Policy, Behavioral Economics
Email: w.dickens@neu.edu
Silvia Domínguez
Ph.D., Boston University
Associate Professor of Sociology
Expertise: International Migration, Race and Ethnic Relations, Social Networks, Qualitative and Ethnographic Methods, Violence and Mental Health
Email: S.Dominguez@neu.edu
Laurie Dopkins
Ph.D., Sociology, Rutgers University
Director, Professional Graduate Programs
Senior Research Associate, Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy
Expertise: Program Evaluation, Community-Based Research, Community and Youth Development, Non-Profit, Philanthropic, Public Administration
Email: l.dopkins@neu.edu
Michael Dukakis
J.D., Harvard Law School
Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
Former Governor of Massachusetts, 1988 Democratic Nominee for President
Expertise: Public Policy, Health Care, Public Administration, Electoral Politics
Email: m.dukakis@neu.edu
James Alan Fox
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Lipman Family Professor of Criminal Justice
Professor of Law and Public Policy
Expertise: Multiple Homicide, Youth and School Violence, Statistics, Capital Punishment
Email: j.fox@neu.edu
Terry Fulmer
Ph.D., Boston College, RN, FAAN
Dean, Bouve College of Health Sciences
Expertise: Elder Abuse and Neglect
Email: t.fulmer@neu.edu
Lori Gardinier
Ph.D., Northeastern University
Director of Human Services
Associate Academic Specialist
Expertise: Antipoverty/ Social Justice Work in Community-based Settings
Email: l.gardinier@neu.edu
Brian Helmuth
Ph.D., University of Washington
Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy
Expertise: Environmental Policy; Ecological Forecasting; Sustainability
Timothy Hoff
Ph.D., University of Albany, SUNY
Associate Professor of Business and Public Policy
Expertise: U.S. health reform implementation, qualitative and mixed methods research, health care quality, organizational change in health care, primary care organization and delivery, physician behavior, health care workforce issues, professionalism
Patricia Illingworth
Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
J.D., Boston University
Associate Professor of Philosophy; Associate Professor of Business
Lecturer, Law and Public Policy
Expertise: Bioethics, Business Ethics, Ethics and Philanthropy, Global Justice
Email: p.illingworth@neu.edu
Thomas Koenig
Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara
Professor of Sociology
Expertise: Law and Society, Economic Sociology, and Social Networks
Email: t.koenig@neu.edu
Katie Koski
Ed.M., Harvard Graduate School of Education
Internship Coordinator
Expertise: Helping young people identify and pursue their career path
Email: K.Koski@neu.edu
Emily Mann
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin
Associate Academic Specialist
Expertise: Early Intervention and Delinquency Prevention, Early Predictors and Trajectories of Children in Special Education
Email: E.Mann@neu.edu
Shan Mohammed
M.P.H., Boston University
Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Health Sciences
Expertise: Public Health Education, Health and Human Rights, Substance Abuse Prevention, Primary Health Care Delivery
Email: s.mohammed@neu.edu
Steven A. Morrison
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Professor of Economics
Expertise: Transportation Economics
Email: s.morrison@neu.edu
Stephen Nathanson
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
Professor of Philosophy
Expertise: Ethics, Political Philosophy, War and Peace, Economic Justice, Epistemology
Email: s.nathanson@neu.edu
Richard O’Bryant
Ph.D, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Director, John D. O’Bryant African American Institute
Expertise: Science and Technology Policy and politics, Urban and Regional studies and Politics, Urban and Community Technology, Community-Based Research
Email: r.o’bryant@neu.edu
Stephanie Pollack
J.D., Harvard Law School
Associate Director of Research, Dukakis Center for Urban & Regional Policy
Lecturer — Law and Public Policy Program
Expertise: Urban Planning, Transportation and Environmental Policy
Email: s.pollack@neu.edu
Rebecca Riccio
M.A., University of Michigan
Program Director, Northeastern Students4Giving (NS4G)
Expertise: Philanthropy, Nonprofit Capacity Building
Email: r.riccio@neu.edu
Matthias Ruth
Ph.D.,University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Professor, Public Policy and Civil and Environmental Engineering
Expertise: Ecological Economics, Dynamic Modeling, Microeconomics and Policy, Resource and Environmental Economics and Policy
Email: m.ruth@neu.edu
Gavin M. Shatkin
Ph.D., Rutgers University
Associate Professor, Public Policy & Architecture
Expertise:Public Policy, Urban Planning
Email: g.shatkin@neu.edu
Dan Spiess
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Lecturer, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs
Research Associate, World Class Cities Partnership and City-to-City
Expertise: Economic Development, Workforce Development
Email: d.spiess@neu.edu
Daniel Urman
J.D., Harvard Law School
Director, Executive Doctorate in Law and Policy
Lecturer, Law and Public Policy
Expertise: Law and Legal Reasoning, Judicial Nominations and Processes, American Foreign Policy, American Politics
Email: d.urman@neu.edu
Thomas Vicino
Ph.D., Public Policy, University of Maryland Graduate School, Baltimore
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Chair, Master of Public Administration Program
Expertise: Urban Politics, Urban/Regional Development, Public Administration
Email: t.vicino@neu.edu
Gregory Wassall
Ph.D., Rutgers University
Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator, Department of Economics
Expertise: Law and Legal Reasoning, Judicial Nominations and Processes, American Foreign Policy, American Politics
Email: g.wassall@neu.edu
Nancy Tavares
M.S.W., Boston University
Co-op Faculty Coordinator
Email: N.Tavares@neu.edu
Full Biographies of Core Faculty
Joan Fitzgerald
Interim Dean, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
Director, Law and Public Policy Program
Director, Law and Public Policy Minor and Urban Studies Minor
Professor of Public Policy & Urban Affairs
As the Interim Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Joan Fitzgerald leads the continued development and expansion of the School. She follows in the footsteps of Founding Dean Barry Bluestone who will continue to teach and conduct research as well as direct the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy. Prior to her appointment, Joan managed several faculty searches that led to doubling the size of the core faculty. In addition to growing the faculty, Joan will be developing a number of new graduate programs within the School.
For the past several years Joan has served as Director of the Law and Public Policy program (LPP) at Northeastern University. The Law and Public Policy program is known primarily for its PhD program, but in recent years Joan has also redesigned the master’s degree as a professional graduate program.
Joan’s current research includes work on “Emerald Cities”, a comprehensive research project that examines how U.S. and Western European cities address the interrelated issues of global warming, energy dependence and opportunities for green economic development. Based from the findings of her research, this potential includes building new technology-based industry clusters, improving the efficiency of production in existing manufacturing processes, and creating well-paying green jobs in construction, manufacturing, and entirely new advanced technology sectors.
Prior to her work on “Emerald Cities”, Joan has written for several journals and regularly advises government officials on new “green-growth strategies”. Her recent publications include her 2002 economic development book, Economic Revitalization: Strategies and Cases for City and Suburb, Moving Up in the New Economy (2006), Emerald Cities (2010) and recent articles in the American Prospect focusing on green building and renewable energy.
Before coming to Northeastern University, Joan taught urban policy and public affairs at the New School University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University.
Phone: (617) 373-3644 | Email: jo.fitzgerald@neu.edu
Len Albright
Assistant Professor, Sociology & Public Policy
Len Albright is an assistant professor of sociology and public policy with appointments of 25% in the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs and 75% in Sociology. Albright recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and was a recipient of the University’s Phoenix Fellowship from 2004-07. His dissertation, supported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the MacArthur Foundation, is an ethnographic study of an affordable housing complex in a suburban New Jersey community.
Trained as an environmental sociologist, Albright is also researching issues of community mobilization around hydraulic fracturing and natural gas extraction in Pennsylvania. He has done extensive ethnographic research on class and racial boundaries within suburban communities.
Albright has also written on the implementation of judicial rulings (such as the Mount Laurel decision) in support of fair housing in the United States. A native of Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, Len maintains an interest in the history and impact of the Mt. Laurel Decisions, a series of NJ Supreme Court decisions that advocated for inclusionary zoning and housing equality.
Areas of Research and Teaching: Urban Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Affordable Housing, Inequality, Qualitative Methods, the Suburbs, Social Theory, Coastal Communities
Phone: (617) 373-2687 | Email: l.albright@neu.edu
Barry Bluestone
Russell B. and Andree B. Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy
Founding Director, Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy
Barry Bluestone is founding Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy and founding Dean of the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs.
Before assuming these posts, Bluestone spent twelve years at the University of Massachusetts at Boston as the Frank L. Boyden Professor of Political Economy and as a Senior Fellow at the University’s John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs. He was the Founding Director of UMass Boston’s Ph.D. Program in Public Policy. Before coming to UMass in the Fall of 1986, he taught economics at Boston College for fifteen years and was Director of the University’s Social Welfare Research Institute. Professor Bluestone was raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended the University of Michigan where he received his B.A., M.A. and finally his Ph.D. in economics in 1974.
At the Dukakis Center, Bluestone has led research projects on housing, local economic development, state and local public finance, and the manufacturing sector in Massachusetts. At the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, he has co-chaired the Open Classroom series, a graduate seminar on critical social issues open free to the public each semester. He was also part of the team that developed the school’s Master’s Program in Urban and Regional Policy (MURP).
As a political economist, Bluestone has written widely in the areas of income distribution, business and industrial policy, labor-management relations, higher education finance, and urban and regional economic development. He contributes regularly to academic, as well as popular journals, and is the author of eleven books. In 1982, he published The Deindustrialization of America (co-authored with the late Bennett Harrison) which analyzed the restructuring of American industry and its economic and social impact on workers and communities. A sequel published in 1988, The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America, also co-authored with Harrison, investigated how economic policies have contributed to growing inequality. In earlier books, Bluestone investigated the low-wage labor market, the aircraft industry, and the revolution in the retail trade sector. In 1992, Negotiating the Future: A Labor Perspective on American Business was published. Co-authored with his father, Irving Bluestone, the book traces the history of labor-management relations since World War II and offers the concept of the “Enterprise Compact” as an approach to industrial relations which can boost productivity, improve product quality and innovation, and enhance employment security. Korean, Spanish, and Japanese editions of this book have been published.
In 2000, Bluestone published two new books. The first of these, co-authored again with Harrison and titled Growing Prosperity: The Battle for Growth with Equity in the 21st Century, investigates the prospects for faster economic growth in the U.S. It was published by Houghton Mifflin and the Twentieth Century Fund. The second, The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space, and Economic Change in an American Metropolis, co-authored with Mary Huff Stevenson and published by the Russell Sage Foundation, was the culmination of nearly five years of research on the new Boston economy. It recounts the industrial and demographic revolution in post-World War II Boston and its impact on racial and ethnic attitudes, residential segregation, and the labor market success of whites, blacks, and Latinos.
Bluestone’s latest book published in 2008 and co-authored with Mary Huff Stevenson and Russell Williams is a major textbook entitled The Urban Experience: Economics, Society, and Public Policy. This work, rich in theory and applied policy, was written for an interdisciplinary audience and can be used at either the undergraduate or graduate level.
As part of his work, Bluestone spends a considerable amount of time consulting with trade unions, with industry groups, and with various federal and state government agencies. He was Executive Adviser to the Governor’s Commission on the Future of Mature Industries in Massachusetts and has worked with the economic development departments of various states. He has testified before Congressional committees and lectures regularly before university, labor, community, and business groups. He appears frequently on local and national radio. Bluestone is also a founding member of the Economic Policy Institute, along with Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, Robert Kuttner, Ray Marshall, and Jeff Faux. In 2006, he served on the transition team for Governor Deval Patrick.
He currently serves as a member of the advisory council to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development as well as the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance. He served on the Governor’s Economic Development Strategy Council and is now an executive board member of the Governor’s Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative. From 2007-2010, he served as a member of the Community Affairs Research Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He is a past board member of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT) and currently as a board member of the Lyric Stage of Boston.
In his spare time, when he was younger, he used to compete in team triathlons as a bicycle racer — fortunately with a team otherwise comprised of orthopedic surgeons and an internist. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife Mary Ellen Colten. Their son Joshua is an undergraduate at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Phone: (617) 373-7870 | Email: b.bluestone@neu.edu | Follow on Twitter @barrybluestone
Chris Bosso
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Professor of Public Policy
A professor of public policy, Bosso writes on the societal impacts of science and technology, environmental and food safety politics, the tactics and strategies pursued by environmental groups, and on public policymaking in general. His most recent major scholarly work is Environment, Inc.: From Grassroots to Beltway (University Press of Kansas, 2005), co-winner of the 2006 Lynton Caldwell Award for best book in environmental politics and public policy by the American Political Science Association.
Bosso is also Principal Investigator on a four year National Science Foundation funded Nanotechnology Interdisciplinary Research Team project, “Nanotechnology in the Public Interest,” a senior researcher with the NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) at Northeastern, and director of the Nanotechnology and Society Research Group which examines the governance challenges posed to local, state, and federal governments by nanotechnology and other emerging technologies.
Phone: (617) 373-4398 | Email: c.bosso@neu.edu
Nonnie Burnes
J.D., Northeastern University
Senior University Fellow, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs
Senior Research Associate, Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban & Regional Policy
Trustee, Northeastern University
Nonnie Burnes ’78 served as the Massachusetts Insurance Insurance Commissioner for Governor Deval Patrick from 2007 to 2009. She also previously served as a Superior Court Judge from 1996 to 2007. Prior to that she was an attorney with the firm Hill and Barlow. She earned her law degree from Northeastern In 1978.
As Insurance Commissioner, she said she oversaw regulation of many lines of insurance, like homeowners’, automobile, life, health, and even wedding insurance. Burnes also oversaw consumer protection efforts, including a consumer hotline she said gets 1,500 calls a month, and educational outreaches using both print and online media.
Burnes championed the deregulation of the auto insurance industry describing the effort as difficult and controversial. Yet said she believed the reform satisfied consumers. She cited a study that found that in the first year, consumers saved about $273 million thanks to the changes implemented during her term.
In October 2009, Burnes joined the faculty of the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs as a Senior University Fellow. She teaches interdisciplinary courses in law, business, public policy, political science and governmental regulation. In addition she engages in research projects and helps to teach seminars in government regulation as well as the Open Classroom Series.
“I think that the practical experience really can illuminate the theory,” Burnes said. “As we might be talking about ‘How would you regulate this market?’ If you want people to behave a certain way, how can you structure a regulation to get there?’ And having seen the way people respond to regulation, I think I’ll have much more insight into it and kind of assist students in thinking about that.”
Phone: (617) 373-7998 | Email: n.burnes@neu.edu
Alan Clayton-Matthews
Ph.D., Boston College
Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy
Senior Research Associate, Dukakis Center for Urban & Regional Policy
Alan Clayton-Matthews is Professor and Director of Quantitative Methods in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. He spent his 2007 sabbatical leave at the Dukakis Center. At the Center, he was the chief designer of the Labor Market Assessment Tool (LMAT) and has served as a consultant on a number of projects including “Staying Power: The Future of Manufacturing in Massachusetts”.
Clayton-Matthews is co-editor of Massachusetts Benchmarks, a joint publication of the University of Massachusetts and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston that presents timely information and analysis about the performance of the Massachusetts economy. He is also a Director of the New England Economic Project, a group of economists and managers from academia, business, and government who study and forecast the New England economy.
Previously, Clayton-Matthews has worked as an economist and policy analyst for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the Social Welfare Research Institute at Boston College, and DRI/McGraw-Hill. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston College.
Phone: (617) 373-2909 | Email: a.clayton-matthews@neu.edu
James Connolly
Assistant Professor, Public Policy & Political Science
James Connolly is an assistant professor of public policy & political science, with appointments of 75% in the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs and 25% in political science. Connolly previously served as a staff researcher at the Earth Institute’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL) where he developed expertise in spatial analytic tools including ArcGIS and spatial statistics. At these labs he analyzed global poverty and mapped data on the movements of recently released prisoners through New York City, among other projects. He has also co-authored several reports on urban environmental stewardship with the University of Maryland’s Program on Society and the Environment. His current research examines community development and mainstream environmental coalitions in state-level urban environmental policies. His interests also include analyzing how the institutions that shape urban environmental land use policy are structured (spatially and politically) and how they are changed. He has published articles in journals including The Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Landscape and Urban Planning, and Environmental Management.
Connolly earned his Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Columbia University.
Areas of Research and Teaching:
- Urban Environmental Planning and Policy, Environmental Stewardship, Spatial Dynamics of Poverty, Geographic Information Services (GIS), Organizational Networks
Phone: (617) 373-8900 | Email: j.connolly@neu.edu
Laurie Dopkins
Ph.D., Rutgers University
Director of Academic Programs, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs
Senior Research Associate, Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy
Laurie Dopkins provides management and coordination for academic programs within the Policy School, particularly the new Master’s in Urban and Regional Policy. She also serves as a Senior Associate in the Dukakis Center, leading projects related to non-profit capacity building, outcomes measurement and evaluation. Laurie is conducting a university-wide inventory of all community-partnerships and programs on behalf of the Stony Brook Initiative.
Immediately prior to moving to Boston in 2008, Laurie was Associate Research Professor at George Mason University where she taught evaluation research methods and led community-based action research projects involving collaborations between nonprofit organizations, government agencies, businesses, private foundations, and multiple units within the university.
Before joining the faculty at Mason, Dopkins had her own consulting firm in Atlanta where she worked with public sector agencies, foundations, and nongovernmental organizations on policy research and program evaluation in a wide range of areas including children and youth, community and economic development, maternal and child health, education, and immigration. Dopkins has broad experience in the management, analysis and evaluation of policies and programs, including the development of accountability and outcomes monitoring systems. She has specialized in developing collaborative evaluation techniques that enhance evaluation capacity and utilization among diverse stakeholder groups, including policymakers and program managers, service providers and clients, community leaders and advocates.
Dopkins has published dozens of evaluation and research reports for foundations, government organizations, nonprofit agencies, and community groups. Her specific areas of interest in the field of evaluation are social indicators, organizational learning, program theory and logic models, evaluation capacity building, evidence based policy and practice, and the translation of knowledge to action. Dopkins received her Ph.D in Sociology from Rutgers University in 1984. She lives in Brookline with her husband, Steve Vallas, and has two grown daughters, Rebecca and Kaitlin.
Phone: (617) 373-2889 | Email: l.dopkins@neu.edu
Brian Helmuth
Ph.D., University of Washington
Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy
Brian Helmuth will be joining us in January 2013 as professor of environmental science and public policy. He comes to us from the University of South Carolina where he was Professor of Biological Sciences in the Environment and Sustainability Program and Marine Science Program. He also served as Director of the Environment & Sustainability Program. His research explores the effects of climate and climate change on the physiology and ecology of marine organisms. Specifically, he uses thermal engineering techniques, including a combination of field work, remote sensing and mathematical modeling, to explore the ways in which the environment determines the body temperatures of coastal marine animals such as mussels and sea stars. A major goal of this approach (funded by NASA and NOAA) is to predict where and when the effects of climate change are likely to occur so that we can mitigate these effects, a method of “ecological triage.” To date Helmuth’s work has centered primarily on temperate rocky intertidal systems in the United States and Europe, but recent work funded by the NOAA Ecofore Program has expanded to include salt marsh ecosystems throughout the U.S.
Helmuth also works with local teachers to develop educational materials relevant to national science standards, and to bring the excitement of science to the classroom. He is actively involved in the South Carolina chapter of the National Marine Educators Association. A major goal of his approach is to make our research relevant to policy makers, resource managers, and the general public at large.
Helmuth earned his PhD from the University of Washington.
Areas of Research and Teaching: Environmental Policy; Ecological Forecasting; Sustainability
Timothy Hoff
Ph.D., University of Albany, SUNY
Professor of Business and Public Policy
Timothy Hoff is Associate Professor of Management, Healthcare Systems, and Health Policy with appointments of 25% in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and 75% in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business. He is a nationally recognized organizational and medical sociologist in the study of U.S. health reform implementation, health care quality, primary care, and physician behavior. In addition, he is a leading voice on the use of qualitative methods in health services research. He has published over 40 articles, several book chapters, and a full-length book entitled Practice Under Pressure: Primary Care Physicians and Their Work in the 21st Century, a sociological analysis of the everyday world of primary care physicians which received an Outstanding Academic Title award from Choice Magazine in 2010.
His health care research, which examines the sociological dynamics of health care workers and work settings and how they influence system performance, has won national awards from the American Sociological Association, Academy of Management, and Society for Applied Anthropology. In 2012, he was named as a “101 Most Influential Professors of Public Health” by MPHProgramsList.com, an online service for public health student education.
Before coming to Northeastern University, Dr. Hoff was a faculty member at the University at Albany School of Public Health where he taught health policy and management courses and was a two-time winner of the school’s excellence in teaching award. Dr. Hoff has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Templeton College of Management, Chair of the Healthcare Management Division of the Academy of Management, and is on several health care journal editorial boards.
He serves as a consultant to numerous agencies and organizations including the American Cancer Society and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Hoff is currently PI on a federal grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, studying patient-centered medical home implementation. Other current research interests include the restructuring of primary care delivery in the United States, the changing nature of the health professional workforce and its impact on system outcomes like quality and access, and articulating new models of professionalism that better fit with the realities of contemporary workplaces and workers.
Hoff earned his Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Albany.
Areas of Research and Teaching: U.S. health reform implementation, qualitative and mixed methods research, health care quality, organizational change in health care, primary care organization and delivery, physician behavior, health care workforce issues, professionalism.
Stephanie Pollack
J.D., Harvard Law School
Associate Director of Research, Dukakis Center
Professor of Practice, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs
Stephanie Pollack is Associate Director of the Kitty & Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, overseeing the Center’s research agenda as well as conducting her own research projects in the areas of transportation policy, transit-oriented development, sustainability and equitable development. Pollack is also on the core faculty for the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, teaching courses to graduate students in the Law and Public Policy program and teaching and supervising internships for the Masters in Urban and Regional Policy program. Her courses include Strategizing Public Policy, Introduction to Law and Legal Reasoning, Housing Policy and Transportation Policy.
Pollack is active in public policy issues affecting transportation, sustainable development and the environment in Massachusetts. She co-chaired Governor Deval Patrick’s 2006 transition working group on transportation and served on Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s Climate Action Leadership Committee in 2009-2010. She currently serves on the boards of Boston Society of Architects, Charles River Watershed Association, Health Resources in Action and MoveMass.
Before coming to Northeastern in 2004, Pollack was a senior executive and attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, New England’s leading environmental advocacy organization. During her two-decade career at CLF, Pollack worked on issues including transportation and transit policy, smart growth and sustainable development and childhood lead poisoning. From 2004 through 2010 she was also a partner in the strategic environmental consulting firm BlueWave Strategies LLC, where she advised clients on smart growth, transit-oriented development and other “green” real estate projects.
Pollack received both a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a BS in Public Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Phone: (617) 373-8341 | Email: s.pollack@neu.edu
Gavin M. Shatkin
Ph.D., Rutgers University
Associate Professor, Public Policy & Architecture
Professor Shatkin has a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs (75%) and the School of Architecture (25%). His research focuses primarily on globalization and urban poverty in Southeast Asian cities. He is the author of Collective Action and Urban Poverty Alleviation: Community Organizations and the Struggle for Shelter in Manila. He has published articles in a number of journals, including Urban Studies, Environment and Planning, The International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Cities, and the International Development Planning Review.
Prior to coming to Northeastern, Shatkin was an Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. He was also a faculty associate in the Center for South Asian Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
Matthias Ruth
Professor, Public Policy and Civil and Environmental Engineering
Matthias Ruth is a full professor with appointments in the Policy School and in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Prior to Northeastern, Professor Ruth was at the University of Maryland where he was the Roy F. Weston Chair in Natural Economics, Director of the Center for Integrative Environmental Research at the Division of Research, Director of the Environmental Policy Program at the School of Public Policy, and Co-Director of the Engineering and Public Policy Program. His research focuses on dynamic modeling of natural resource use, industrial and infrastructure systems analysis, and environmental economics and policy. His theoretical work heavily draws on concepts from engineering, economics and ecology, while his applied research utilizes methods of non-linear dynamic modeling as well as adaptive and anticipatory management. Applications of his work cover the full spectrum from local to regional, to national and global environmental challenges, as well as the investment and policy opportunities these challenges present.
Professor Ruth has published 12 books and over 120 papers and book chapters in the scientific literature. He is a founder of Ecological Economics, serves on the boards of numerous journals and scientific organizations, is a founding Co-editor in Chief of the international science journal Urban Climate, and collaborates extensively with scientists and policy makers worldwide. Recent publications include Distributional Impacts of Climate Change: Social and Economic Implications and Dynamic Modeling of Diseases and Pest.
Ruth’s research has been supported by government agencies and private sources including: the National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Organization, Natural Resources Defense Council, Research Council of Norway, German Ministry of Science, Education and Technology and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Department of the Environment, and Environmental Defense.
Ruth earned his Ph.D. in geography from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Areas of Research and Teaching:
- Ecological Economics, Dynamic Modeling, Microeconomics and Policy, Resource and Environmental Economics and Policy
Phone: 617/373-8900 | Email: m.ruth@neu.edu
Dan Spiess
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Lecturer, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs
Research Associate, World Class Cities Partnership and City-to-City
Dan is a Research Associate at the Dukakis Center, working with the World Class Cities Partnership, the City To City program, and the Economic Development Partnership. He also serves as an adjunct lecturer in the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs.
Dan received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His doctoral dissertation focused on political decision making in planning, public participation, and community-based organizations with additional research interests in economic and community development, environmental planning, and environmental justice.
Prior to his doctorate, Dan worked on the brownfields program at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and was a planner at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has also worked on a variety of social, public health, and environmental extracurricular projects including the Environmental Justice Initiative (under the direction of Dr. Bunyan Bryant) at the University of Michigan.
Phone: (617) 373-7103 | Email: d.spiess@neu.edu
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