Students meet Rockefeller Center Faculty and Learn about Public Policy Minor, Other Curricular Opportunities

Public Policy Minor Open House - Friday, September 16, 2011

Approximately 100 new Dartmouth students spent some of their Friday morning with Rockefeller Center faculty and staff to learn more about the Public Policy Minor and other curricular opportunities.  Interest in public policy here at Dartmouth continues to be strong, as the crowd in The Class of 1930 Room made evident.  We also distributed about 90 pocket-sized copies of The US Constitution to kick-off our Constitution Day events. 

If you missed speaking with us at the Class of 2015 Information Expo or the Public Policy Minor Open House, we hope that you will join us on Monday, September 19th from 10-11:30 AM for our annual Rockefeller Center Open House.  We will have refreshments, giveaways, a chance to meet Rocky faculty and staff, and perhaps most importantly: speak with upper class students who have participated in our curricular and co-curricular programs to see how these opportunities have impacted their Dartmouth experience.

We hope that you will join us in welcoming some of the newest members of the Rockefeller Center staff:

• Timothy Ruback is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. Ruback received his B.A. from Bates College and did his graduate training at Arizona State University (Ph.D. 2008). His research interests focus upon the ways in which intersection of theory and methodology works to shape and enclose our understandings of global political life. These themes were addressed in his dissertation, titled The Thucydides Function: International Relations Theory as Interpretations of The Peloponnesian War. His current research addresses these themes in the context of border politics and militarized interstate manhunts. He is most recently the author of "'Let Me Tell the Story Straight On: Middlemarch, Process-Tracing Methods, and the Politics of Narrative" which won the British Journal of Politics and International Relations award for the Best Article in 2010. Before coming to Dartmouth, Professor Ruback taught courses in international relations and foreign policy at Smith College. His courses at Dartmouth will address themes of leadership and global public policy.

• Benjamin Cole is a Post-Doctoral Fellow, Co-Manager of the Policy Research Shop, and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. He received a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University's School of Public Policy in 2011, and holds MA and BA degrees in Political Science from the University of New Hampshire. His dissertation, "Reconceptualizing Democracy: Harnessing Social Complexity at the State-Society Interface," proposed a new theory of democratic governance, derived from complexity theory, and developed a quantitative measure of democratic governance quality on that basis. His teaching interests include comparative politics, comparative local and regional governance, and public policy/administration, particularly research design and methods. He taught full-time for the International Affairs dual major program at the University of New Hampshire from 2008-2011 while completing his dissertation. In addition to his research and mentoring at Dartmouth, Ben also maintains an active independent research agenda in democratic transition and state fragility/failure, and recently joined the DC-based Societal-Systems Research, Inc., and its affiliate non-profit, the Center for Systemic Peace, both funded by the US Political Instability Task Force, as Research Associate. Among other publications, since 2008 Ben has co-authored the annual "Global Report" series, which includes the unique "State Fragility Index," a cross-national time-series measure of state fragility.

• Margaret Post is a Post-Doctoral Fellow, Co-Manager of the Policy Research Shop, and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. Post holds a Doctorate in Social Policy from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, and a Master of Public Policy from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. For over ten years, she has worked as a community organizer, educator, and scholar. Her research interests include the role of grassroots organizations in social policy change and the civic development of young people and new immigrants. In addition to teaching courses on organizing and public policy, Post conducts trainings for a broad range of non-profit and political organizations. In 2007, Post received the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Bailis Family Social Justice Award from the Heller School at Brandeis University. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of the publication, Diversity and Democracy, and is a member of the Next Generation Engagement Project at the New England Resource Center for Higher Education. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Center, Post was Director of the Donelan Office of Community Based Learning at Holy Cross (Worceseter, MA).