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Kerri M. Raissian
Doctoral Candidate, Public Administration
Email: keraissi@maxwell.syr.edu Website: kerriraissian.com
I am currently a doctoral candidate in Public Administration at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, and I expect to defend my dissertation in the spring of 2013. Prior to and during my graduate school career, I worked with children and families suffering from abuse. These experiences along with active collaborations with my advisor, Leonard Lopoo, and colleagues from the Doris Duke Fellowship have anchored my research agenda in child and family policy: namely, family violence response, fertility, family formation, the child welfare system, and poverty. I completed fields in social policy and public finance, but I also have strong interests in program evaluation, economic demography, legal institutions, and microeconomics.
My dissertation, “Assessing the Role and Impact of Public Policy on Child and Family Violence,” uses quantitative techniques to evaluate existing policies and seeks to understand how future policies may reduce violence within the family. Specifically, I investigate if the provision in the federal Gun Control Act which prevents domestic violence offenders from having a firearm reduces homicides, if state-level “pro-arrest” policies reduce family homicides, and if local unemployment is associated with changes in child abuse rates. In addition to my dissertation, I am actively collaborating on several papers with scholars at Maxwell and other institutions.
Dissertation Committee: Professors Leonard M. Lopoo (chair), Anna Aizer (Brown University), Robert Bifulco, Leonard E. Burman, and Douglas A. Wolf.
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David Berlan
Doctoral Candidate, Public Administration
Email: dgberlan@maxwell.syr.edu
I am a doctoral candidate in Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and expect to defend my dissertation in April 2013. My primary areas of research and teaching interest are nonprofit/NGO management, public management, organization theory, global public health, international development, public policy processes, and public participation.
My dissertation explores the relationship between nonprofit missions and organizational change, examining both how different interpretations of mission factor into changes in leadership, strategy, and structure, and the resulting pressure of these changes upon missions. I used mixed methods to examine this question, analyzing panel data on over 150 internationally-active nonprofits over a dozen years to identify factors correlated with organizational changes, and conducting four in-depth case studies to understand the mechanisms by which changes occur. This dissertation seeks to build theory by testing organization theories against global theories of advocacy and policy process for best fit with empirical evidence, while also providing practitioners useful lessons about leadership strategies for organizational change.
Dissertation Committee: Professors John McPeak (chair), Tina Nabatchi, Hans Peter Schmitz, Jeremy Shiffman and David Van Slyke.
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Jung Eun Kim
Doctoral Candidate, Public Administration
Email: jkim142@maxwell.syr.edu
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and expect to complete my degree in May 2013. My fields of interest include climate change and energy policy, science and technology policy, international environmental technology transfer and diffusion, international environmental institutions, program evaluation, and public policy process.
My dissertation examines knowledge creation and transfer of renewable energy in the international domain. Specifically, I empirically investigate (1) how developed nations respond to their fossil fuel endowments in terms of innovating clean automobile technologies, and (2) how foreign aid, a channel of technology transfer, help developing nations increase their capacity on using renewable energy. My dissertation contributes to the field by highlighting a potential win-win solution for the dilemma between domestic economic development and finding an international climate change agreement from a technological point of view.
Dissertation Committee: Professors David Popp (Co-chair), Peter Wilcoxen (Co-chair), John McPeak, W. Henry Lambright, and Dr. Nick Johnstone (OECD)
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