People
Director
Elliott Sclar (Profile)
sclar@ei.columbia.edu
Associate Director
Nicole Volavka-Close (Profile)
nvolavka@ei.columbia.edu
Research Coordinator
Celeste Alexander (Profile)
calexander@ei.columbia.edu
Grants Manager
Jennifer Schumacher-Kocik (Profile)
jschumacherkocik@ei.columbia.edu
Project Coordinator
Jonathan Chanin (Profile)
jac2115@ei.columbia.edu
Project Coordinator
Jennifer Graeff (Profile)
jgraeff@ei.columbia.edu
Affiliates
Jacqueline Klopp (Profile)
Assistant Professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
jk2002@columbia.edu
Julie Touber (Profile)
Former Assistant Director
jt2089@columbia.edu
Sarah Williams (Profile)
Director, Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia University
sw2279@columbia.edu
Elliott Sclar
Elliott Sclar is the director of CSUD and professor of Urban Planning and International Affairs at Columbia University. He holds senior appointments in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and the School of International and Public Affairs and is an active participant in the work of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Sclar is a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Research Network on Human Settlements (HS-NET), UN-HABITAT, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Urban Management. Sclar was co-coordinator of the Taskforce on Improving the Lives of Slum Dwellers. It is one of the ten taskforces set up by the UN Millennium Project to help guide the implementation of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. The Taskforce's book length report (2005): A Home in the City, (PDF), is available on the UN Millennium Project website (http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/tf_slum.htm) and from Earthscan.
As a professional economist, Professor Sclar has written extensively about the strengths and limitations of markets as mechanisms for effective public policy implementation. Sclar's book You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization (2000), a critique of overreliance on market mechanisms, has won two major academic prizes: the Louis Brownlow Award for the Best Book of 2000 from the National Academy of Public Administration and the 2001 Charles Levine Prize from the International Political Science Association for a major contribution to public policy literature.
In recent years Sclar has been a leading figure in a scholarly movement to reconnect the work of population health experts and urban planners in creating healthier cities. (See his recent series of articles in The Lancet, American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Urban Health and a report published by the Transportation Research Board Institute of Medicine) (PDF). One of the main challenges he sees is the need to begin to develop more precise measurements of built environment impacts on population health. In November 2007 he received the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the International Society for Urban Health in recognition of his work.
Full description of the MDG Project
Taskforce 8 Report on Improving the Lives of Slum Dwellers: A Home in the City (PDF)
Nicole Volavka-Close
Nicole Volavka-Close is associate director at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, where she has worked for over four years. Nicole received her master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, with a focus on environmental policy studies. She received her undergraduate degree from New York University. Her early work at the Earth Institute involved the publication of several working papers: "Reaching the Millennium Development Goals in South Asia," "India's Challenge to Meet the Millennium Development Goals" and "Agricultural Performance in Uttar Pradesh: A Historical Account." In 2002, Volavka-Close worked at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi in the Division of Policy Development and Law. More recently, she has been looking at the issues of urban population health systems and adaptation to climate change. She is interested in the linkages among and between health, climate change, transport and land use, and how they impact vulnerable population groups; and how cross-sectoral and multi-level stakeholder collaboration might be fostered and utilized to address these issues in a comprehensive manner.
Celeste Alexander
Celeste Alexander is research coordinator of CSUD and responsible for a wide range of research, writing, editorial and administrative duties on behalf of the center. Prior to joining CSUD, she worked at Oxford University Press for over three years where she gained experience as a production editor and in a wide range of other aspects of book publishing. She has a background in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago where she was awarded the university's highest honor for academic performance and leadership in the university community. Through a joint program with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, she also studied at the University of Zimbabwe, pursuing coursework on Zimbabwe's history, politics, languages and economy. Celeste is currently pursuing coursework at Columbia University; recent courses of study include Anthropology of the Political and Interdisciplinary Planning for Public Health. Research interests include the relationship between social institutions and processes of community formation and change in an urban context, anthropology of institutions, and ecological anthropology.
Jennifer Schumacher-Kocik
Jennifer Schumacher-Kocik is grants manager at CSUD. She holds a Master in Public Administration degree with a specialization in nonprofit administration from Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Mount Holyoke College. Jennifer has extensive international work experience as an English language instructor in Asia and Europe. In addition to her work at the Earth Institute, Jennifer has contributed professional expertise to the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations working as a volunteer Liaison Coordinator with the Asia Regional Project; she is the founding author of the article “Strategic Planning” in their online NGO Handbook and is an ongoing contributor.
Jonathan Chanin
Jonathan Chanin is project coordinator of CSUD and helps with management and administrative duties for the Rockefeller Foundation Urban Summit project. Before joining CSUD, he worked for the Center for Environment, Economy and Society (CEES) at Columbia University. With CEES he gained experience in Miches, Dominican Republic as a field coordinator and videographer on the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Economic Growth Initiative (ESSEG). As an undergraduate, Jonathan majored in philosophy, with a concentration in psychology, at Columbia University.
Jennifer Graeff
Jennifer Graeff graduated in May 2008 with a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and with a Master of Science in Urban Planning from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University (GSAPP). In 2006, she participated in the university and CSUD sponsored urban planning studio that traveled to Kenya to study the impact of urbanization on the peri-urban town of Ruiru, which is located outside of Nairobi. After this experience, as well as interning at CSUD to continue work on the urban planning studio, Jennifer traveled back to Nairobi to conduct field research for her master's thesis on public transportation in Nairobi, entitled "Public Transportation in the Nairobi Metropolitan Area: the Future Role of Matatus." She also participated in Global Studio in 2007 and 2008, an interdisciplinary academic program that brings students together from all over the world to devise solutions for housing, water and sanitation, and information dissemination issues in selected townships in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Jacqueline Klopp
Jacqueline Klopp is an Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University where she teaches the politics of development. She holds a BA from Harvard University where she received a Michael Rockefeller grant to live and work in Western Kenya for two years. This sparked her fascination and love for Kenya and she subsequently finished a PhD in Political Science from McGIll University focusing on land, violence and corruption in multiparty Kenya. Her research continues to focus on the intersection of development, democratization, governance, violence and corruption in Kenya and the Great Lakes region. Klopp is the author of articles in Africa Today, African Studies Review, African Studies, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Comparative Politics, Forced Migration Review, World Policy Journal and the International Peace Academy among others. Her work at CSUD focuses on strategies for improved land-use through deepening local knowledge production through university reform, improved urban governance and policy-networking.
Julie Touber
Julie Touber recently received her Master of Science in urban planning from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. She also holds an equivalent planning degree from La Sorbonne in Paris, France. Julie has extensive experience in the developing world. Following an internship at the World Heritage Center at UNESCO, she wrote her first thesis on the impacts of preservation policies on World Heritage Sites based on the case of Luang Prabang in Laos. She was part of the Columbia University urban planning studio team that was sent to Accra to study disaster mitigation. Following this experience, she wrote the paper “Sanitation Crisis in Accra, Ghana.” Her master’s thesis was related to the scale of planning practices and development policies in the developing world, using the case study of Sana’a in Yemen.
To learn more about the urban planning studio see:
http://www.arch.columbia.edu/Studio/Spring2003/UP/Accra/
Sarah Williams
Sarah Williams is currently the Director of Columbia University's Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL). Williams specializes in the representation of digital information/mapping and ecological design and has over 13 years experience in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Her classes include, Spatial Data Visualization, Introduction to Geographic Information Systems, Advanced Geographic Information Systems, and Google Map Hacks. The Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL) which Williams’ directs uses innovative mapping and visualization techniques to highlight urban issues. The work of SIDL has been widely exhibited including recent shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) and the Venice Biennale. Before becoming the Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab, Williams was at MIT where she started the Geographic Information System (GIS) Laboratory. Williams also helped establish MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory, which is a joint program between MIT's Media Lab and Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Williams also has experience working with Remote Sensing data through her early works as a member of the Clark Labs IDRISI programming team. Williams’ educational background is in Geography, Landscape/Urban Design, and Urban Planning. Sarah has a Masters degree from MIT in City Planning and Urban Design and received her Bachelor’s degree in Geography and History from Clark University.