The heart of NYU Wagner's programs is our faculty. An amalgam of full-time, clinical/research/visiting, and adjunct professors, they are outstanding teachers, expert researchers and committed practitioners.
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The Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service is home to research and policy centers, institutes, and initiatives that focus on solving urban problems and strengthening public policy and public service nationally and around the world.
Ranked #6 in Public Affairs by U.S. News & World Report, the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service educates the future leaders of public, nonprofit, healthcare and private sector organizations addressing the world's critical issues.
Students arrive at NYU with the desire to serve the public. They leave with the skills and experience to bring about change. Combining coursework in management, finance and policy with cutting-edge research and work experience in urban communities, the NYU Wagner education will enable you to transform your personal commitment into public leadership.
Whether in their first or last semester, students at NYU Wagner have many resources to help them navigate their way to graduation.
NYU Wagner's Office of Career Services (OCS) provides students and alumni with the resources needed to build successful public service careers. Explore our resources for Job seekers and employers.
Welcome to the Wagner Alumni WebPages, where you can find information about resources for alumni from the school, join the Wagner Alumni Listserv and much more.
Read about news and ideas from NYU Wagner faculty and alumni and keep in touch with interesting and useful events at the school.
- About Wagner
- Quotes and Testimonials
- Faculty Quotes
John Billings
"We're trying to understand why it is that there are huge disparities in health outcomes – between low-income populations, say – so that policymakers can find solutions. For example, we looked closely at Medicaid claims date to track how well primary care providers managed their patients. Did one provider have more emergency room visits that another? More primary care visits? What we found was that hospital clinics were much worse at managing patients than private doctors and free-standing, community clinics were. We're trying to sort out why this is. Wagner's Center for Health and Public Service Research (CHPSR) serves as a vehicle for connecting academic research with policymaking and program development in order to address key issues concerning the delivery of health care and social services." Jan Blustein
"The challenge is to make the connection between medical care and health and to understand how factors other than medical care can influence health among older people. In doing research that will benefit older people, it is vital to have an appreciation of the importance of housing, maintaining social connections and maintaining functional abilities, in addition to the benefits of high-technology medicine." Charles Brecher
"Much of my research is done in connection with the Citizens Budget Commission. It is a nonprofit, nonpartisan civic organization that seeks to improve financial management and service delivery by the City of New York and the State of New York. Recent reports have dealt with methods to assess the affordability of debt at the state and local level, ways to use the internet and e-gov techniques to make procurement by City agencies more cost-effective and the implications of converting the civilian municipal workforce from a 35 to a 40 hour work-week. Research is now underway on cost containment strategies for New York State’s Medicaid program and options for financing major transportation infrastructure improvements. I enjoy the applied nature of the work, with opportunities to interact with state and local officials." Sewin Chan
"My research is focused primarily on the well-being of individuals and how this is shaped by the interaction of individual decision-making, market institutions and government policies. I’m particularly interested in the economics of aging and retirement, especially the risks facing older households. Recently, I’ve collaborated with Professor Jan Blustein to examine health outcomes and the labor market behavior of grandparents raising their grandchildren. This work will help in developing better policies and programs to support this growing yet vulnerable group that is performing an important social role." Salo Coslovsky
"It is very difficult for businesses to compete globally if they have to comply with costly and cumbersome labor and environmental regulations. And yet, there is no development if workers are being exploited and the environment is being depleted. In my research, I study how government agencies, the bureaucrats who staff them, and the organizations they partner with use law to shape the competitive environment in which businesses operate. Can real-world, and therefore imperfect, government agencies promote sustained, equitable, and environmentally friendly growth even when beset by global competition? If so, how?
" John Donnellan
"Leadership in public sector and healthcare organizations happens through leaders with the ability to communicate and achieve a clear and transformative organizational vision, create a sustainable financial structure, align the organizational structure to achieve the vision, and adapt continuously. Leaders of today’s and tomorrow’s public organizations must understand how to gather and use evidence to make more effective organizational systems and strategic decisions. They must create accountable organizations and be personally accountable. They must be persons of courage and integrity." David Elcott
"By 2030, when Baby Boomers will be between 66 and 84 years old, they will still represent more than 20% of the U.S. population. They are healthier, wealthier, more mobile, and more highly educated than any preceding generation, and the presumption is that they will remain active and stay involved in society for many decades. This has led to a shift in some of the research about the elderly, from traditional geriatric concerns (health, housing, psychological services) to such issues as full-time “encore” or bridge careers and volunteerism, job flexibility and life meaning, time management and mobility. This cohort could offer 30 or more years of active and creative involvement, revitalizing, in the particular focus of my work, the culture, civic engagement, social services, political activism, intellectual life and artistic creativity and communal institutions of minority and faith-based communities.
" Ingrid Ellen
"My book explores the stability of racial integration in neighborhoods. The conventional view, to borrow Saul Alinsky’s famous line, is that racial integration is merely the time between when the first black moves in and the last white moves out. Counter to this view, I found that many neighborhoods in the United States are racially integrated and stay that way for years. Integration has become both more prevalent and more stable over the last several decades. Still, metropolitan areas in the United States remain highly segregated and many integrated neighborhoods do “tip” top become majority black. Thus, in the second half of the book, I explore why this happens and why certain neighborhoods can remain successfully integrated over time." Erica Foldy
"I am now involved in a study of how social change organizations use various identities – racial, ethnic, class, geographic – as a resource in their work. In a related arena, I am also interest in team learning and, in particular, how multi-cultural teams can learn from and across difference. I am just embarking on a project studying teams and what enables team learning in a large state social services agency. I am very interested in the mutual influence between social identities, like race, gender and class, and organizational life. How do social identities affect organizations? And how do organizations affect their members’ experience of their social identities? My last study found that, in fact, work organizations do influence their employees’ racial and gender identities, even though those identities are usually understood as largely stable and immune to organizational effects." Anthony Kovner
"Leadership training is extremely important for non-profit boards. The key distinctive characteristic of nonprofits is their mission. The boards of for-profit organizations are accountable to the shareholders, and those of public organizations are accountable to the voters. Part of the problem of accountability of nonprofit boards of trustees is that they often don’t get the information they need to carry out the function they’re supposed to perform."