Voinovich School Announces New Faculty

Joining the School in August, 2012 will be the Environmental Studies Director, Professor Geoffrey D. Dabelko.

• Geoffrey D. Dabelko is director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program, a nonpartisan research-policy forum on environment, population, health, development, and security issues. He is also an adjunct professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. For the past 20 plus years, he has brought together policymakers, practitioners, journalists, and scholars grappling with complex links among environment, population, development, conflict, and security. His current research focuses on climate change, natural resources, and security as well as environmental pathways to confidence-building and peacebuilding, with a special emphasis on water resources. Geoff has held prior positions with the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He currently leads two Wilson Center efforts supported by USAID: the Health, Environment, Livelihoods, Population, and Security (HELPS) Project and the Resources for Peace Project. Geoff is co-editor with Ken Conca of Environmental Peacemaking and Green Planet Blues: Four Decades of Global Environmental Politics (4^th edition). He is an IPCC lead author for the 5^th assessment (Working Group II, Chapter 12), and member of the UN Environment Programme's Expert Advisory Group on Environment, Conflict, and Peacebuilding. He holds an AB in political science from Duke University and a Ph.D. in government and politics from the University of Maryland. Dr. Dabelko will join the Voinovich School faculty on August 27, 2012.

Joining the Voinovich School in January of 2013 will be Assistant Professor Sarah Davis, Assistant Professor G. Jason Jolley, and Assistant Professor Aleksey Kolpakov.

• Dr. Sarah Davis is an ecosystem ecologist with expertise in energy bioscience, biogeochemistry and eco-physiology. She quantifies ecosystem-level carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas fluxes in managed landscapes using experimental and modeling approaches. Dr. Davis received her PhD in Biology from West Virginia University in 2007 where she studied the long-term response of forest carbon sequestration to common harvesting practices. She continued her study of forest carbon balances and began researching bioenergy agro-ecosystems while in a post-doctoral position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and was then appointed in 2010 as a Bioenergy Analyst for the Energy Biosciences Institute, an interdisciplinary research program at UC Berkeley and UIUC. Dr. Davis contributes to the nascent field of energy bioscience by exploring opportunities for bioenergy development that will simultaneously enhance ecosystem services. Her work describes the environmental impacts and benefits of novel second-generation bioenergy production systems that include temperate perennial grasses, desert plants (Agave spp.), and woody feedstocks. Dr. Davis also has a broad teaching background. Prior to her graduate research, she worked as the Assistant Director for the Regional Math/Science Center in Frostburg, MD, an alternative education program for underprivileged high school students, where she developed curricula for hands-on environmental science projects. She taught a variety of undergraduate biology and ecology courses while in graduate school and also as postdoctoral research assistant, and continued to lecture and advise graduate students as an Adjunct Assistant Professor even after being appointed as a Bioenergy Analyst at UIUC.
• G. Jason Jolley is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Senior Research Director for the Carolina Center for Competitive Economies (C3E) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He leads C3E's research activities in local/state economic development incentive policy evaluation and development, strategic planning, impact analysis, and industry cluster characterization to address issues of economic competitiveness. Dr. Jolley's research has been published or is forthcoming in Business Strategy and the Environment, Economic Development Quarterly, Review of Policy Research, and Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting, & Financial Management. He received his PhD in public administration from North Carolina State University, where he specialized in economic development and research methods. He received his MA in political science from the University of Tennessee and his BA in economics from UNC-Chapel Hill.
• Mr. Kolpakov is currently finishing his Ph.D. degree at School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), Indiana University. He has a unique educational background that combines European and American traditions of Organizational Behavior and Organizational Theory. He graduated from London School of Economics and Political Science with Master of Science degree in Organizational and Social Psychology. He also has a minor in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management from Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. In his research, Mr. Kolpakov primarily aims to understand processes leading to formation and sustainability of public management networks. Using the case of public-private partnership in K-12 system in the state of Ohio, he developed a theoretical framework that explains a structural development of public management networks over time. This study has value for policy makers, public managers and public program evaluators who evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of networks as response mechanisms to complex and "wicked problems. Mr. Kolpakov has considerable undergraduate and graduate teaching experience in a variety of public administration courses over the past 13 years. His courses at an undergraduate and graduate levels range from introductory courses in public management to organizational behavior, to human resource management, to analytic tools of management and quantitative research methods. He has an extensive professional experience working as a consultant for the United Nations agencies and projects for the past 10 years. Mr. Kolpakov has consulted various public, international and nonprofit organizations in his home country and abroad to improve their collaborative and learning capacity.