David Booher: I co-authored an article in the Spring 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. The article on “Informality as a Planning Strategy: Collaborative Water Management in the CALFED Bay-Delta Program" found informal collaboration was interdependent and yet in tension with the formal processes in the CALFED program across planning, participation, and decision making. I also gave a presentation, "Public Participation in Post Bureaucratic Civil Society", in the spring to the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley. I had a great time teaching PPA 296L this summer with 8 of PPA's best. Currently I am facilitating transition planning for the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District to assume wastewater services for the City of West Sacramento in November. On the scholarship side of things I just finished a book chapter "Civic Engagement as Collaborative Complex Networks" for a forthcoming book: Civic Engagement in Network Society. Since 2007 I have reviewed articles for the journals Planning Theory and Practice and Journal of Planning Education and Research.
Miguel Ceja: Last spring I was appointed Project Director for the Faculty Research Fellows Program and will continue to serve in this capacity during this academic year. This program utilizes the California State University’s applied research resources to address important needs of governmental policy-makers. This fall I was also appointed Associate Director of our university’s new Independent Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy. Classes begin this fall with an entering cohort of 17 students. A co-authored piece, “No color necessary: School agent’s perspectives on students’ academic ability and access,” will be published in a forthcoming edited book titled, Schools, Neighborhoods, and Social Inequalities: Vol. 2., Advances in Research and Diverse Communities. A second piece, co-authored with a UCLA graduate student, “Faculty-student interactions and Chicana Ph.D. aspirations,” has also be accepted for publication and will be featured in the Journal of the Professoriate in Fall 2008. Finally, for the last year I have served as a research consultant for the Achieving the Dream Initiative, a multiyear national initiative to help more community college students succeed.
Peter Detwiler: I taught “Planning in California: An Overview & Update” for UC Davis Extension. There were nearly 40 students in the four-day class, many of whom are earning the Land Use and Natural Resources Certificate. The Extension class is a highly concentrated version of my PPA 250 course --- but without the group projects, multiple papers, or extensive readings! I also reviewed several manuscripts as one of the new members of the Board of Editors of State and Local Government Review, a journal published by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia. SLG is affiliated with the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). And I reached a professional milestone, having worked 35 years in the public sector. I started as an Administrative Trainee for the County of San Diego in September 1972. (Richard Nixon was the president, Ronald Reagan was the governor, and Pete Wilson was still an Assemblyman.) After taking last fall off, I’m delighted to be back teaching again. I started teaching in the PPA program in 1991.
Don Gerth: I have spent much of my recent time on preparing a manuscript on the history of the California State University. The research portion is complete. The other professional activity to which I have given a significant amount of time has to do with the restructuring of the American Council for the United Nations University (which I currently chair) and aligning it with the American Council on Education, both in Washington.
Tim Hodson: I have been appointed by Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court Ronald M. George to be part of the newly created Commission for Impartial Courts. Specifically, I will be the Advisor Member of the Task Force on Public Information and Education, one of four task forces comprising the Commission. The purpose of the Commission for Impartial Courts is to study and recommend ways to ensure judicial impartiality and accountability for the benefit of Californians. The Task Force on Public Information and Education is charged with evaluating and making recommendations about improving public education and information about the judiciary, judicial elections, and judicial candidates.
Mary Kirlin: I spent much of the late spring working as a member of the campus Strategic Planning Council. My 240B students, who helped work on this, will be pleased to know we now have five foundation goals that are being vetted across campus. You can find them at www.csus.edu/spc. This summer I attended two conferences, one with the American Democracy Project where a colleague and I presented our work on the Civic Learning Initiative. CLI is an effort to bridge the engagement efforts with the focus on first year students. Our work has become part of a CSU publication on the different ways to engage first year students. I also presented a paper on civic education and civic skills at the American Political Science Association conference in Chicago. This conference attracts nearly 7,000 political scientists so it's always fun. I'm looking forward to beginning my life as an Associate Professor, with all that may bring...
Ted Lascher: Last May I stepped down as Department Chair and assumed a new role on campus: Interim Director of the Serna Center. This organization, named for the late Sacramento mayor and his wife, focuses especially on Latinos in the Sacramento region. This fall the Center will offer a seminar series, sponsor a research presentation, help bring to campus films from the Latino Film Festival conducted in the Bay Area, and undertake other projects. My students and former students may be especially interested in our first seminar series presenter: Professor Lydia Chavez of UC Berkeley, author of The Color Bind which I have often used in PPA 210. I am also continuing to do research on direct democracy, institutional effects on happiness, and local elections. I am pleased to report that PPA alumna Ellen Martin and I had an article accepted to PS: Political Science and Politics. The, entitled “Beyond the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund: Support for Any Future American Terror Casualties” is the culmination of our long collaboration on terror victim compensation that began with her thesis on the subject. Finally, I hope to remain a “semi-regular” at our Wet Wednesdays. See you there!
Betty Moulds: Over the last six months I have continued in my role as Executive Director of the Western Political Science Association. In March, we held our 59th meeting of the association in Las Vegas. Our 60th anniversary convention will be held in March 2008 in San Diego. During the spring, I served also as a member of the American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting
Nancy Shulock: As director of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy, I have been continuing to work on issues of student success in the California Community Colleges. Our February policy brief on the topic created lots of interest and I’ve been traveling and giving numerous presentations on that report. The Institute has two longer reports coming out soon that provide the technical analysis behind the policy brief. One is on factors that promote or impede student success in community college and the other is on state finance policy for its community colleges. I am also beginning a new project to study K-16 councils across the country to see if they are effective in aligning the K-12 and higher education systems of education. We’re also engaged in a project to project the impact on the capacity and the budgets for the University and State University systems of increasing the numbers of Latino students who are eligible for California’s public universities directly out of high school. Finally, I am preparing for another fun year of teaching the Executive Fellowship academic seminar through the Center for California Studies.
Rob Wassmer: This past summer I completed three research projects. The first was for the University of California, Davis Medical Center and involved a regression and benefit/cost assessment of their CARE Connection Program that is designed to redirect indigent and frequent users of their emergency room to more effective health care options. I earlier had worked on a first stage of this research with PPA Alum Lucinda Winward and we plan on submitting a paper based on it to a health economics journal. The second project was with Kace Chalmers (a CSUS professor of economics who is currently teaching PPA 251) and involved work for the California Governor’s Office through the CSU Faculty Research Fellows Program on “What Really Determines Whether a Manufacturing Firms Locates and Remains in California?” The third project was the completion of a paper on “The Increasing Use of Property Tax Abatement as a Means of Promoting State and Local Economic Activity in the United States.” I will present this paper at a conference sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. in early October and it will eventually be a chapter in a book on property tax base erosion in the United States. If interested, the draft of this paper is at http://www.csus.edu/indiv/w/wassmerr/increasingpropertyabatement.pdf. Since January of 2007 I have also refereed journal articles submitted to Public Finance and Management, Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Environment and Planning B, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Real Estate Economics. I have also been involved with membership on the Ramona Village Faculty and Staff Housing Advisory Board at CSUS. Oh, and in my spare time I now act as Chair of the Department.
Bob Waste: I just completed "Urban Policy Development" a book chapter in the forthcoming 2008 2nd edition of James Midgley, Martin Tracey & Michelle Livermoore (eds.), The Handbook of Social Policy (Sage Publications, 2008); and co-authored with Robert Fountain, "The Economic Impacts of CAlPERS Benefit Payments" (March 2007), and "Analysis of the Impacts on California and Counties of SACRS (the State Association of County Retirement Systems) Member's Benefit Payments" (July 2007). In addition, I gave a keynote address at the SACRS Annual conference in Santa Clara in May 2007 on "The Economic Impacts of CalPERS Benefit Payments," and will participate in a panel on public pension systems at the California Pension Fund Investment Conference in Los Angeles (September 19, 2007). Furthermore, in the past 6 months, I have served as a consultant on economic development for Yolo County, on pension investments for CalPERS, on health policy for The California Endowment, and on land use and park development for the Two Rivers Parkway Foundation, and for the Townsend, Raimundo, Besler & Usher consulting firm.
