Jeffrey L. Brudney

Cleveland State University's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs announces the appointment of Jeffrey L. Brudney, Ph.D., as the new Albert A. Levin Chair of Urban Studies and Public Service. His appointment began January 2, 2007. Brudney is a recognized scholar in the area of public administration, nonprofit sector studies and volunteerism. He has received several national and international awards recognizing his extensive publication record and the critical contributions of his research to the advancement of the study of public administration.

"The Levin Chair has served as one of the College's major assets attracting to Cleveland State University distinguished individuals recognized for their contributions as urban scholars and practitioners," said Mark S. Rosentraub, Ph.D., Dean of Levin College. "The Chair endowed us with greater visibility and depth, as it brought to the city and the region fresh insights on how to respond to economic and social development challenges.

Dr. Brudney will carry on this great tradition. He is a gifted teacher and scholar in the area of public administration, nonprofit sector studies and public and nonprofit volunteerism who has displayed a lifetime commitment to the transfer of sophisticated research findings into practical forms of public service."

As Levin Chair, Brudney will focus on issues related to nonprofit administration management and volunteerism, government-nonprofit relations, and public service delivery and management. He will teach graduate courses in public administration, nonprofit management, volunteerism, and research methods and statistics.

"It is a great pleasure and honor to join the Levin College as the Albert A. Levin Chair of Urban Studies and Public Service," said Brudney. "I look forward to working with faculty, students and staff to build on the high quality, reputation and impact achieved by the College. The Levin College has excelled at uniting applied work with professional publication. I hope to contribute to this enviable tradition and to help make Cleveland State University a leading 21st century urban research university."

The Levin Chair was the first endowed professorship in America that combineaching with direct public service to cope with the problems of the urban environment. Established in 1969, the Levin Chairholders allow the University to bring scholars of great stature to the University and enhance the reputation of the College. In 1997, with Levin College ranked in the top ten schools of urban affairs in the country, the Chair became a tenured professor with a renewal appointment.

BIOGRAPHY

Jeffrey L. Brudney, Ph.D., is Professor of Public Administration and Policy, Adjunct Professor of Social Work, and a member of the Nonprofit and Community Service faculty in the School of Business at the University of Georgia. Dr. Brudney is co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Nonprofit Organizations and the Master of Arts in Nonprofit Organizations degree program (MNPO) at Georgia. He received his B.A. degree at the University of California - Berkeley, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor.

Dr. Brudney has published widely in the areas of public administration, the nonprofit sector and volunteerism. According to a study published in the January 2005 issue of the Journal of Public Administration Education, he ranks tenth in research productivity among scholars world-wide based on article publication in all referred journals affiliated with the American Society for Public Administration over the past decade (1993-2002). The Urban Institute calls him "the foremost research expert on volunteer management programs and community volunteer centers in the United States."

Among his many publications, Dr. Brudney is the author of Fostering Volunteer Programs in the Public Sector: Planning, Initiating, and Managing Voluntary Activities (Jossey-Bass, 1990), for which he received the John Grenzebach Award for Outstanding Research in Philanthropy for Education. He is the co-author of Applied Statistics for Public and Nonprofit Administration (Thompson-Wadsworth, 2006), now in its sixth edition, which has been used for instruction in more than 120 colleges and universities. His latest book is the edited volume Emerging Areas of Volunteering (Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), 2005), which was supported by a grant from the UPS Foundation and is distributed to all ARNOVA members.

Dr. Brudney has won several international awards, including being a three-time recipient of the Herbert Kaufman Award that is given annually by the Public Administration Section of the American Political Science Association for excellence in research. In 2000, he won the William E. Mosher and Frederick C. Mosher Award for the Best Article Written by an Academician published in the leading journal Public Administration Review. Dr. Brudney has also received the Mentor's Award, an honor conferred only once every three years by the Women's Caucus for Political Science of the American Political Science Association to "faculty members who have provided exceptional guidance to graduate students or to junior faculty members."

As a result of his interest in higher education and mentoring, in 2005 Dr. Brudney was appointed Faculty in Residence in the Graduate School at the University of Georgia. His major responsibilities include working with graduate students from minority backgrounds and developing a formal mentoring program to assist graduate students throughout the University.

In 2004, Dr. Brudney received the Harriet Naylor Distinguished Member Service Award from the Association for Volunteer Administration for "outstanding contributions to the Association through advocacy, research, publication, and/or program development and management." Dr. Brudney has advised the Points of Light Foundation, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and other organizations with a mission in volunteerism. He was one of two lead researchers on the first nationally representative study ever undertaken on the status, practices, and prospects of volunteer management in charities and religious congregations in the United States. This study on Volunteer Management Capacity was published by the Urban Institute in 2004.

Dr. Brudney was a Fulbright Fellow at York University in Toronto, Canada, in 1994. As the Fulbright-Kahanoff Scholar at York, he was a member of the Voluntary Sector Management Program, then the leading Canadian center for study and practice in the nonprofit sector. Dr. Brudney has also lectured on volunteerism in France, Northern Ireland, and The Netherlands. He represented Athens, GA, as a delegate to the 1997 Presidents' Summit for America's Future, attended by all living U.S. Presidents, and worked with his local Summit delegation on volunteer initiatives, especially to assist youth, including the founding of a Voluntary Action Center in Athens in 1998.

Dr. Brudney has twice served as chairperson of both the Section on Public Administration of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the Section on Public Administration Education of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). He has also been a member of the Board of Directors of ARNOVA. He serves on the editorial boards of several major journals in the fields of public administration and nonprofit sector studies, including the American Review of Public Administration and Nonprofit Management and Leadership. Dr. Brudney is the book review editor of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

For media inquiries, contact Nancy Carlucci Smith, Communication Account Representative, in the Cleveland State University Department of Marketing and Public Affairs, at (216) 523-7294 or (216) 687-2290.

Watch Video of Dr. Brudney's Installation as the Albert A. Levin Chair of Urban Studies and Public Service