Affiliated Faculty

Senior Fellows:

Minnis Ridenour - IPG Senior Fellow

Minnis E. Ridenour came to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in 1974 as the university's Budget Director and Chief Business Officer, later serving as Vice President for Finance until his promotion in 1987 as Executive Vice President. In May 2001, Mr. Ridenour was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Since 2004, Mr. Ridenour has served the university as University Senior Fellow for Resource Development. Mr. Ridenour also served as Executive Vice President of the Virginia Tech Foundation and serves on the boards of other university related corporations. Mr. Ridenour currently serves on the Virginia United Methodist Homes Board, the Hollins University Board of Trustees, the board of directors for the Carilion Biomedical Institute, the Carilion Foundation Board, the Western Virginia Foundation for the Arts and Sciences Board, and the board of the Blacksburg Partnership. In the past, Mr. Ridenour has served as chairman of the board of directors, chairman of the executive committee, and chairman of the audit committee of Rocco, Incorporated; as chairman of the board of the Montgomery Regional Hospital; as chairman of the audit committee and member of the board of directors of Petroleum Marketers, Inc. (PMI). Mr. Ridenour teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in financial management for governmental and non-profit organizations.

Edward Weisband - IPG Senior Fellow

Dr. Weisband holds the Edward S. Diggs Endowed Chair Professorship in the Department of Political Science of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. He is a Senior Fellow of the VT Institute for Governance and Accountabilities. He is a graduate of Princeton University , B.A., 1961, Stanford University , M.A., 1965, the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University , Ph.D., 1969. He is also a member of the faculty of the Government and International Affairs Program of the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs.

Affiliated Faculty:

Erv Blythe

Erv Blythe is the Vice President for Information Technology for Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University . He has a B.A. degree from VPI&SU in English (1968). His Masters degree (1983) and doctoral studies (not completed) are in the Environmental Design and Planning Program of the College of Architecture, focused on the relationship of advanced information technology infrastructure to regional competitiveness. Since coming to Virginia Tech in 1977 from the U.S. Department of Defense/Dept. of Navy, Mr. Blythe has served in a number of roles, ranging from Associate Director of Computing to Principal Investigator for the development of the Virginia Education and Research Network. He provided executive leadership and was the primary advocate for the University's nationally recognized Electronic Villages Program, Scholarly Communications/Network-based Publishing Project, Faculty Development Institute, and for its emphasis on the development of network and computer based learning capabilities. He was also the primary architect of the University's uniquely successful migration of its administrative systems to an enterprise-wide, client-server based resource that fully leverages the internet and open systems standards. Mr. Blythe has presented numerous invited briefings and papers at the state and national level.

John Browder

John O. Browder (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania) is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Public and International Affairs. His research interests involve international development, urbanization, regional development and environmental sustainability. Dr. Browder has received several external grants to support his ongoing research on the social dimensions of deforestation and alternative development in the Brazilian Amazon. He has published numerous journal articles on these subjects and is co-author of the book Rainforest Cities: Urbanization, Development, and Globalization in the Brazilian Amazon. Dr. Browder teaches International Development: Policy and Planning; Environmental Ethics and Policy, Planning Theory, and Planning Theory and Practice.

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Earthea Bubanje-Nance

Dr. Earthea Bubanje-Nance is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning Program in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech. She received her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. Her areas of specialization are international water and sanitation development, community participation in development projects, evaluation methodology, environmental policy design and implementation, sustainable infrastructure development (especially water, wastewater, and solid/hazardous waste), and Latin America and Africa.

Larkin Dudley

Dr. Larkin Dudley is Associate Professor at Virginia Tech's Center for Public Administration and Policy (CPAP). She received her Ph.D. in Public Administration from Virginia Tech. Her areas of specialization are public administration, policy analysis, contracting and organizational design.

Wilma Dunaway

Dr. Wilma Dunaway is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Government and International Affairs program. Dr. Dunaway received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Tennessee in 1994. Her areas of interest are international political economy; theories of development & global change; social movements & revolutions; race, class & gender; and the political economy of the environment.

Alnoor Ebrahim

Dr. Ebrahim joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 1999, shortly after completing his doctorate degree at Stanford University. His specialization was in civil society studies and international development. He also has Master's and Bachelor's degrees in environmental and civil engineering from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively. He is currently on a two year visiting professorship at Harvard's Hauser Center. His publications include NGOs and Organizational Change: Discourse, Reporting and Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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Bruce Goldstein

Bruce Goldstein is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning Program in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech. Initially trained as a conservation biologist, Bruce received his Ph.D. from the Department of City and Regional Planning at U.C. Berkeley in 2004. His dissertation examined the difficulties in coordinating scientific involvement in the construction of multispecies habitat conservation plans on the periphery of fast-growing cities of central and southern California. He is currently working on a U.S. Forest Service – funded study of innovation in planning for wildfire at the wildlands-urban interface in an era of devolution of state power over public lands. As these two projects suggest, Bruce is particularly interested in understanding alternatives to deadlock when environmental planning disputes are woven into a tangled mass of ecology, land use, scientific practice, and institutional form.

David Gring

David M. Gring was president of Roanoke College , Salem , VA from 1989-2004; prior appointments included VPAA at Concordia-Moorhead and faculty appointments at Lebanon Valley College (PA) and Indiana University -- Bloomington . He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Franklin and Marshall College with A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University -- Bloomington .  During his tenure at Roanoke, Gring implemented comprehensive strategic plans that led to increases in undergraduate enrollment and endowment assets of 22% and 272% respectively; a new curriculum and departmental honors programs to complement the college-wide honors program; capital fund raising campaigns that exceeded goals by 8% and 28% respectively; new endowed professorships; an endowed chaplaincy program; several building projects; an entrepreneurial relationship with The Egg Factory, Roanoke, VA; and sustained substantial increases in student/faculty research experiences. In 2004, the college completed its 50 th consecutive year of balanced financial operations and installed the Nu of Virginia Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Dr. Gring also initiated a reorganization of the Board of Trustees that included a more effective committee structure and measures to improve governance efficacy and accountability. The implementation of a companion advisory body, The President's Advisory Board, served to assist in the development and completion of the strategic plans and to identify trustee leadership for the future.

Dr. Gring's current and past Board and service experiences include: North Cross School, Roanoke, Virginia; The Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce; Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership (former president); Virginia Foundation of Independent Colleges (former vice-president); Council of Independent Colleges of Virginia (former chair of the Executive Committee); Hotel Roanoke Foundation, Inc., Roanoke ; Council of Independent Colleges, Washington, D.C.; Virginia Business Editorial Advisory Board; and the Governor's Taskforce on Tax Reform, Virginia. Gring also serves as a consultant for the President's Consultation Service, Council of Independent Colleges, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Gring's interests are in the area of strategic leadership, governance, and accountability in not-for- profit organizations including: trustee (director) effectiveness/ assessment/accountability, development, and recruitment; executive mentoring and coaching; trustee/president (CEO) relationships; senior administrative staff recruitment, organizational structure, and team dynamics; strategic planning; and administrative relationships and governance.

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Laura Jensen

Laura S. Jensen is an associate professor with the Center for Public Administration and Policy in the School of Public and International Affairs. She joined the Virginia Tech faculty in fall 2006 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where she was Associate Professor of Political Science and a faculty associate of the Center for Public Policy and Administration. Dr. Jensen earned her M.P.A. (1991) and Ph.D. (1996) from the University of Connecticut while serving in elected municipal office. She also holds an M.F.A. in Music Composition from Princeton University, and a B.A. from Wellesley College. Her research on U.S. social policy has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Political Science Association. She is also known for her work on government accountability; conditional Federal spending; American political development; and federalism and intergovernmental relations. She (and co-author Sheila Kennedy) won the 2005 award for the best paper on ethics and accountability in the public sector from the University of Pittsburgh's Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership, and her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation and the Dirksen Congressional Center. In addition to Patriots, Settlers, and the Origins of American Social Policy (Cambridge, 2003), Dr. Jensen has published book chapters and articles in The Review of Politics, Public Administration Review, P.A. Times, Polity, Studies in American Political Development, Peabody Journal of Education, Law and History Review, and Perspectives on Politics. She serves on the editorial board of Polity and the editorial executive committee of Social Science History.

Anne Khademian

Anne M. Khademian is an associate professor with the Center for Public Administration and Policy in the School for Public and International Affairs at Virginia Polytechnic University based in Alexandria, VA. Her broad research interests focus on the role of public managers in the governance of public organizations and broader policy areas, on organizational learning, and inclusive public management efforts that broaden our understandings of accountability, expertise, and engages the long-running discussion of public managers and democratic practice. She has a particular interest in homeland security as a policy area, and has written on the state and local capacities for homeland security and the political dimensions of the policy arena. Anne is the author of numerous articles on public management and public policy, and the books Working with Culture: The Way the Job Gets Done in Public Programs (CQ Press, 2002), Checking on Banks: Autonomy and Accountability in Three Federal Agencies (Brookings, 1996), and The SEC and Capital Market Regulation: The Politics of Expertise (Pittsburgh, 1992).

Ted Koebel

Dr. C. Theodore (Ted) Koebel is the founding director of the Center for Housing Research and Professor of Housing and Urban Planning. He has written numerous reports and articles on housing market trends, affordable housing, housing policies and programs, and economic development. He has worked extensively with developers, state and local agencies, and housing advocates in the provision of affordable housing and urban redevelopment. Dr. Koebel is a board member and current president of VMH, Inc., Virginia 's largest nonprofit developer. VMH, Inc., provides housing and economic opportunities to low-income families through real estate development, property management, and micro-enterprise development. Dr. Koebel is a native of Cincinnati , Ohio . Prior to joining Virginia Tech in 1990, he was on the faculty of the University of Louisville , where he directed housing and economic development research.

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Bob Leonard

Bob Leonard is the head of the MFA program in Directing and Public Dialogue in the Department of Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, where he also teaches undergraduate directing and performance skills. His teaching has a specific focus on ensemble processes, collaborative creation of new work, and creative community partnerships. He is the founding artistic director of The Road Company, a theater ensemble based in Johnson City, Tennessee. Leonard is co-director of the Community Arts Network (CAN) with Linda Burnham and Steve Durland of Art in the Public Interest. Leonard is a founding member of the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET) - the national coalition of ensemble theaters. He currently serves on NET's board of directors. Leonard has been involved with many of the formative steps including the creation of a TCG Ensembles WorkGroup, which fostered the program of professional ensemble residencies in Towson State's innovative MFA training program.

Timothy Luke

Dr. Tim Luke is University Distinguished Professor in Political Science and Program Head of Government and International Affairs. Dr. Luke received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Washington University , St. Louis in 1981. His areas of research specialization include environmental and cultural studies as well as comparative politics, international political economy, and modern critical social and political theory. He teaches courses in the history of political thought, contemporary political theory, comparative and international politics. During 1996, he was named Visiting Research and Teaching Scholar at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, and in 1995 he was the Fulbright Professor of Cultural Theory and the Politics of Information Society at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand . He has continued teaching courses online for Victoria University's School of English, Film and Theatre Studies from 1998-2001. He serves on the editorial board of Organization & Environment, New Political Science, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Telos, International Political Economy Yearbook, and Post-Communist Cultural Studies with Penn State University Press. He has also served as an editorial board member with Journal of Politics.

Anne Moore

Anne Moore is the Associate Vice President for Learning Technologies and Director of Information Technology initiatives at Virginia Tech. Drawing upon Virginia Tech's strengths in information technology, Dr. Moore is responsible for building partnerships within the university and with other organizations that assist in meeting modern needs for technology in society. She heads the university's Learning Technologies division, a strategic component of Information Systems at the university. She coordinates the Center for Innovation in Learning, which provides grants to faculty and staff for integrating technology into teaching in strategic curricular areas, and the Executive Forum in Information Technology, which encourages public discussion on current technology issues. She also is the founding chair of the Electronic Campus of Virginia, a cooperative of public and private institutions focused on providing distance learning to citizens. In addition, she has been an administrator and adjunct faculty member at her alma mater, William and Mary, where she took all three of her degrees.

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Patrick Roberts

Patrick S. Roberts is an assistant professor with the Center for Public Administration and Policy in the School for Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech. He holds a Ph.D. in government from the University of Virginia and an M.A. in political philosophy from Claremont Graduate University and has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. His research interests include how federal agencies can act independently in a politicized environment and how organizations change or do not change. He has particular interests in homeland security and intelligence policy, American political history and in the ideas of tolerance and respect among antagonistic groups. Patrick has published articles, essays, and reviews in a variety of scholarly and popular journals.

Joyce Rothschild

Joyce Rothschild received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1977 and has been a Professor at Virginia Tech since 1991. Her main areas of research and teaching--organizational democracy, dignity in the workplace, and organizational accountability--well support the main themes and purposes of our proposed certificate. Her book, The Cooperative Workplace: Potentials and Dilemmas of Organizational Democracy and Participation (Cambridge University Press) won the C. Wright Mills Book Award in 1987, denoting it as the most significant book of the year for the sociological profession. In addition, she has published many articles in the leading journals based on original data collection and findings supported by a research grant she received from the Aspen Institute (1993-96) on "The Role of Whistle Blowers in Organizational Accountability."

Aaron Schroeder

Aaron Schroeder, PhD, is currently a Visiting Professor in the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech.  Dr. Schroeder has extensive experience in information technology and its applications to the public and private sectors, as well as policy and program development, deployment and evaluation.  

From 2002 to 2007, Dr. Schroeder was the Director for the Center for Technology Deployment at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), which by itself, was the fifth largest research center at Virginia Tech. As Principal Investigator, he managed approximately twenty research projects per year, twenty full-time and part-time staff members, eight graduate students, and approximately $2 million per year in research expenditures. The center performed extensive work in building partnerships with both public and private agencies to produce ‘live’ demonstration projects; the application of both managerial and technical evaluation tools to establish the likelihood of an inventions deployment into real-time environments; and information technologies and their application to Advanced Traveler Information Systems and Advanced Traffic Management Systems.

From 1998 to 2002, Dr. Schroeder was the Leader of the Information Applications Group at VTTI. The mission of the program was to utilize information technology and inter-institutional (e.g. public-private) partnerships to develop and deploy new or enhanced public services. Responsibilities include the management of existing program development and deployment projects, procurement of all program funding, management of program relationships with private and public-sector personnel and political representatives, and coordinating with other Institute research programs.

Other research appointments included the National Academy of Public Administration, where he studied the relationship of the National Guard to public, non-profit, and private agencies in natural disaster response and recovery, and earlier assignments at VTTI, serving as PI, co-PI or research associate, taking responsibility for necessary policy analyses, stakeholder facilitations, and development of applicable IT solutions.

In addition to his research program, Dr. Schroeder was an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Public Administration and Policy from 2004 through 2004, teaching Research Methods and Statistics, and Internet, Database, and Administrative Technologies.  As an adjunct instructor in CPAP and at Elon College (now University) from 1994 to 2001, he taught or co-taught at the masters and doctoral level a variety of courses in Statistical Methods, Policy Network Analysis, Internet and Database Technologies, Computer Business Applications,  Public Budgeting, Public Administration, and Policy Analysis.

Lisa Schweitzer

Lisa Schweitzer is an Assistant Professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California. She holds a PhD in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on environmental and transportation policies and their effects on impoverished communities. Her work has been funded by the Federal Highway Administration, the California Toxic Substances Research Program, and the Honda Foundation, and her writing has appeared in policy, planning and engineering journals.

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