I began serving as dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs in January 2022. Previously, I served as associate dean for academic programs at Georgia Tech Professional Education. In that role, I was responsible for developing academic programs, overseeing all academic offerings and curriculum, and leading outreach and student affairs. I played a key role in leading Georgia Tech’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

My research and teaching have been at the nexus of environmental and health policy and the built environment, with a special focus on youth engagement and health equity.

I am the associate dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. My job involves supporting our faculty and staff in providing innovative educational experiences. Before joining the Humphrey School in August 2020, I was a professor of communication studies in the College of Liberal Arts. My research focuses on the interactions between social identities, media, and the public, and I’ve written several books and articles on these topics.

For the past several years I’ve collaborated on a variety of civic media and history projects at Gordon Parks High School in St. Paul, and in support of the Hallie Q. Brown Center Community Archive, to expand the understanding of Black history in Minnesota.

In my free time, I’m always on the outlook for interesting birds.

I joined the Humphrey family as director of admissions in November of 2016. Before then, I worked for five years as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion for the UMN School of Public Health. I have worked in higher education for 15 years. As a highly dedicated student affairs professional, I have worked with students at Rutgers University and North Carolina State University as a housing administrator.

I hold a BA degree from James Madison University in mass communications, and a MS degree from The E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.

Serving as director of the JSI is a great honor. I feel very privileged to work with such dynamic leaders.

I grew up in rural Minnesota and have lived in Saint Paul for the past 10 years. I joined the staff of the Humphrey School in the fall of 2021 with a background in nonprofits and event management. It was the ability to work with the JSI program that most strongly drew me to this position in the admissions office, and I am excited to be a part of this program. I attended Carleton College and Hamline University for Global Studies, with a focus on Mongolian culture and development.

I am a PhD student at the Comparative and International Development Education program, College of Education and Human Development. I also obtained a master's degree in the same program. I am from Tokyo, Japan. Before I came to the US, I worked as an international educator at a Japanese university.

My research interest is college students' identity development and internationalization of higher education. I am also passionately working for DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) on campus as one of the minoritized students, who is an international student and a student of color.

I like traveling, exploring nice restaurants/cafe/ pastry, and meeting new people. I am excited to be a part of the PPIA JSI program this summer!

I am currently a PhD student at the Humphrey School studying urban planning. Before that I completed my Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree, also at the Humphrey School. I am interested in the intersections of sustainable development, environmental justice, and environmental review processes. Specifically, my research explores how communities engage in the environmental review process and how they can shape development and planning outcomes.

In addition, for the past two years I've worked part time for the Minnesota Department of Human Services Licensing Division, doing data analytics and visualization to help improve state services. I also serve as the PhD representative on the Public Affairs Student Association (PASA). Outside of work and academics I enjoy playing and watching soccer, producing music, and playing video games with friends. I'm very excited to serve as a teaching assistant for JSI and I look forward to learning alongside the cohort!

I am a graduate student at the Humphrey School in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Program, and I'm also minoring in human rights. I studied biology as an undergrad at the U of M, but decided I wanted to do something more public-facing such as public policy or advocacy. I am interested in climate policy, but also many other things such as social and political theory, labor, housing, environmental justice, and so on. In my free time, I enjoy activities such as reading, cooking, gaming, listening to music, and playing basketball.

This is my first time working with JSI, and I look forward to getting to know all of the great students and staff!

I’m a doctoral candidate at the Humphrey School, and I’m excited to be teaching stats for the JSI program this year. I was born and brought up in India where I pursued a dual degree in B.E. (Hons.) Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering, and M.Sc. (Hons.) Mathematics from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani.

In 2016, I joined the Humphrey School to pursue a master’s degree in public policy and was subsequently admitted to the PhD program in 2018. I currently work at the Human Capital Research Collaborative (HCRC) on interventions in early childhood education. My current research focuses on benefit-cost analysis, program evaluation, and social impact financing.

Outside of my work, I enjoy watching movies and TV series, and playing lawn tennis.

I am a PhD student in Public Affairs with a focus on social equity, public finance, and public policy analysis. I joined the Humphrey School in 2020. I received my master’s degree in public policy from the University of Southern California in 2018. My research investigates the relationship between public investment and social inequality. My primary interest lies in racial equity issues, particularly how the improvement of public infrastructure would have different impacts among population groups. My works also engage in labor market outcome disparities. My current project explores how racial equity audit is initiated and implemented, and what outcomes have been achieved. I am excited to serve as a teaching assistant for JSI and am looking forward to learning with the cohort together!

I'm a rising fourth-year PhD student at the Humphrey School, where I research how public policies and institutions affect inequality and discrimination. Specifically, as a labor economist, I study how labor unions protect workers in labor markets where employers enjoy disproportionate bargaining power. I'm originally from Broward County, Florida, and before coming to Minnesota I received bachelors degrees in economics and international affairs from the George Washington University in Washington, DC. During and after undergrad, I worked in an after-school youth center as a "jack of all trades," cooking snacks, keeping attendance, running billiards tournaments, and teaching music production classes. In my free time, I enjoy biking and producing music and I'm involved in local community organizing.

This is my second summer as a JSI instructor and I'm excited to delve into applied economics with this year's JSI cohort! I hope to contribute to a fun and intellectually stimulating learning environment here at JSI.

I started my PhD studies in the Applied Economics department in Fall 2020. Before commencing my studies, I worked in tax administration for eight years. My field of research is in environmental and natural resources economics as well as public economics. My research has focused on finding how degradation to the environment affects rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa. I have also worked on investigating the effectiveness of tax policies on tax compliance and evasion.

I am an associate professor at the School of Nursing, as well as affiliated faculty at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and University of Minnesota’s Urban Research Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC). I do action research using qualitative and mixed methods on a variety of community identified topics. My main research is on sex trading, sexual exploitation, and sex trafficking. This research started with community partners on the north side of Minneapolis in 2005. Some of my past work is available here, more recent work can be seen here. Since then I have done work across Minnesota with marginalized communities, people involved in sex trading and many other stakeholders. My PhD is in anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York City. My personal research mission is to co-create empirical knowledge in service of effective social change for justice and equity.

In my module for the JSI, we are going to explore qualitative research methods by looking at research on sex trading and trafficking. This will help us dig in and dig deep to understand qualitative methods. We will be doing a short module, so this will be an introduction to qualitative methods. I look forward to meeting you and learning together.

I am a doctoral fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change at the University of Minnesota. My research focuses on institutional responses to gender-based violence (GBV) in Ecuador. I earned my Master of Arts in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati (UC) where I conducted qualitative field research focused on how the political Left Turn in Ecuador impacted state responses to GBV in Ecuador. While working on my Master's, i was also a member of the University of Cincinnati Gender Equity Research Team, conducting a gender equity analysis of the City of Cincinnati commissioned by the City of Cincinnati Gender Equality Task Force. I graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from the University of Cincinnati. Before joining the Humphrey School, i served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay and worked as an advocate for survivors of GBV in the United States and Ecuador for ten years. When I’m not researching, i enjoy reading, cooking, and traveling.