Associate Professor Kathryn McDermott (education and public policy) has been named acting director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration for the 2013-2014 academic year, while Director M.V. Lee Badgett is on leave.
“I am pleased to have the opportunity to lead CPPA while Lee is on leave,” McDermott said. “I’m looking forward to working with the faculty and staff to keep all of our initiatives moving forward.”
McDermott takes the reins as CPPA celebrates its 15th anniversary. She has been a member of the center’s faculty since she arrived at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1999, with a joint appointment to CPPA and what was then the School of Education.
As one of the longest-serving members of the CPPA faculty, McDermott has helped shaped the center’s mission, including its focus on social change. Her research explores the formation and implementation of state-level education policy and the effects that those policies have on educational equity. Her most recent book, High Stakes Reform: The Politics of Educational Accountability, places growing demands for educational accountability within the general context of performance measurement policy and examines the policy interventions of states in local school districts.
Badgett’s leave comes as part of the Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship, an elite honor from the university that recognizes outstanding scholarly work. She will spend the year exploring the economic impact that social and legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people has on developing countries around the world, as well as on employers in the United States.
CPPA is the hub for interdisciplinary public policy research, teaching and engagement at UMass Amherst.