Selected Faculty Profiles

Ragui Assaad
A native of Egypt, Ragui Assaad is a professor of labor policy and labor market analysis in developing countries, community and economic development, and developing countries' urban planning. His current research projects include studying the effects of economic reform on the Egyptian labor market, female labor supply in Egypt, and community development efforts among Cairo's informal waste collectors.

Jason Cao
Jason Cao is an assistant professor with the regional policy and planning area. His current research mainly focuses on land-use and transportation planning in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

Yingling Fan
A native of China, Yingling Fan is a planner at the forefront of a new generation of scholars who are using multi-disciplinary, mixed methods approaches to understand how investments in infrastructure and shaping urban form are affecting people’s access to opportunities, especially for the poor and underserved. Her work on neighborhood design and active living, for example, addresses the role of how family contexts such as single parenthood and female labor participation moderate the impact of the built environment on physical activity, especially in communities of color. Her research on transit investments has shown how a new light-rail system has increased job-accessibility for the economically disadvantaged.

Katherine Fennelly
Katherine Fennelly's studies public policy related to the integration of immigrants and refugees in the United States, including the preparedness of communities and public institutions to adapt to demographic changes. In 2009, she conducted a noteworthy study of the economic impacts of immigrants in Minnesota. Her research, conducted in collaboration with diverse groups ranging from immigrant organizations to business associations, is being used to craft programs to strengthen opportunities for new immigrants. She is bilingual in Spanish and English and has worked and traveled extensively throughout Latin America.

Greta Friedemann-Sánchez
Greta Friedemann-Sánchez is an economic anthropologist whose research on rural development in Latin America explores the role of property ownership, social capital, and domestic abuse in the intra-household bargaining process of families in Colombia.  Her recent book, Assembling Flowers and Cultivating Homes:  Labor and Gender in Columbia (Lexington Books 2006), illustrates how access to employment for women changes intra-household dynamics. An assistant professor of international development in the global policy area, Friedemann-Sánchez's research on rural development in Latin America (Colombia) explores the links between agro-industrial employment in the context of structural adjustment programs and the individual and gendered experience of employment and socioeconomic development and change at the household level.

Edward G. Goetz
Edward G. Goetz is a professor of housing and local community development planning and policy. His research focuses on issues of race and poverty and how they affect housing policy and development. Goetz is the author of Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America (2003, Urban Institute Press), Shelter Burden: Local Politics and Progressive Housing Policy (1993, Temple University Press), and co-editor of The New Localism: Comparative Urban Politics in a Global Era (1993, Sage Publications). He recently led the school's first study abroad course in world cities in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Deborah Levison
Deborah Levison is a professor whose work centers around labor economics and gender issues. Recent projects have focused on the effect of Egyptian girls’ household work on their school attendance, child domestic servants in Latin America, and on children engaged in high-risk work in Brazil. She recently spent a sabbatical year in Tanzania studying how water gathering and other household work by children affects their education.

Samuel Myers
Samuel L. Myers, Jr., is Roy Wilkins Professor of Human Relations and Social Justice and directs the Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice. He pioneered the use of applied econometric techniques to illuminate racial disparities in criminal justice systems, detect illegal discrimination in credit markets, assess the impacts of welfare on family stability, evaluate the effectiveness of government transfers in reducing poverty, and detect disparities and discrimination in government contracting.

Kathryn Quick
Kathryn Quick's work focuses on how managers in public and nonprofit organizations create opportunities for communities to address public issues together. She is studying methods for effectively engaging stakeholders with substantially different ways of knowing, technical knowledge, perceptions of risk, and preferences for management intervention. Her research suggests that participation and inclusion are different and complementary ways of engaging diverse populations and that use of a mixture of approaches enhances the democratic legitimacy of a process through diverse representation.

Joe Soss
Joe Soss, Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service, is a leading scholar on the U.S. welfare system who has written extensively on issues surrounding race in America, including a forthcoming book titled, Disciplining the Poor:  Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. Soss’s research explores the politics of policy organization and public management, focusing on public policies that govern the life conditions, behaviors, and statuses of socially marginal groups.

Judy Temple
Judy Temple, an economist, addresses issues of diversity in her research on the long-term outcomes of early childhood intervention. She is associate director of the Chicago Longitudinal Study, which follows over 1,000 children from urban, economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Temple's various studies highlight the contributions of school mobility, parental involvement, educational expectations, and other family and school experiences in preventing learning problems and promoting educational and economic success. 

Zhirong (Jerry) Zhao
A native of China, Jerry Zhao brings a cross-cultural perspective to the study and practice of public administration. His research focuses on public budgeting and finance, in particular how local governments generate sufficient revenue, how state and local fiscal structures affect the pattern and effectiveness of public service delivery, and how public and nonprofit organizations interact with each other in budgetary and service decision making.