Fulltime Faculty

Tom Angotti   CV   E-mail   Webpage
Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers University

Tom Angotti joined the Department in 2002. An advocate of community planning throughout his career, he is a founding member of the Task Force on Community-Based Planning in New York City. He formerly chaired the Pratt Institute Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, and was a senior planner in the New York City Department of City Planning and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. He also taught at Columbia University, Harvard, and University of California, Berkeley.

Tom is the Land Use columnist for www.gothamgazette.com . He edits Progressive Planning Magazine and the journal Planning, Practice and Research , and is a Participating Editor of Latin American Perspectives . He has published two books ( Metropolis 2000 and Housing in Italy ) and numerous articles on urban affairs and planning. His book on community planning in New York, We Won't Move: Community Planning in "The Real Estate Capital of the World" , will be published by MIT Press. At Hunter, Tom Angotti directs the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development.

John Chin   CV   E-mail
Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Columbia University
M.S. in Urban Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research

John Chin's research focuses on the role of community institutions in community planning and in the delivery of social and health services, particularly to under-served communities, such as immigrant communities and communities of color. He is also interested in how key community-based institutions in immigrant and minority communities shape community values and norms, particularly in relation to controversial or sensitive topics, like HIV. Another project in development examines the ability of small cities to cope with large and sudden influxes of immigrant populations.

Professor Chin is the Principal Investigator of a 5-year study funded by the National Institutes of Health on Asian immigrant religious institutions and their potential role in HIV prevention for Asian immigrant communities. Prior to coming to Hunter College, Professor Chin was a Senior Research Associate for 6 years at the New York Academy of Medicine. Previously, he was also an assistant professor of clinical sociomedical sciences at Columbia University (Mailman School of Public Health) and a visiting assistant research scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to his academic/research career, Professor Chin was on staff for 8 years at the the Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (APICHA), a NYC-based nonprofit organization, of which he was a co-founder and Deputy Executive Director. He also worked for the NYC Commission on Human Rights and the NYC Comptroller's Office.

Jill Simone Gross CV  E-mail
Ph.D in Political Science from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York
MSc in the Politics and Government of the United Kingdom from the London School of Economic and Political Science

Jill Simone Gross is an Associate Professor of Political Science, with expertise in comparative urban governance, development and participation in West Europe and North America. In addition to her work on governance and participation, Jill has also done extensive research on the challenges of bringing development to blighted communities - focusing on business improvement districts, digital development and tourism. Her new book, Governing Cities in a Global Era: Urban Innovation, Competition and Democratic Reform (Palgrave Macmillan, November 2007) (co-edited with Robin Hambleton), brings together scholars from eleven countries, in one of the first global books to provide a thorough examination of the urban challenges now facing cities on all continents. Professor Gross is one of the North American Editors for the peer reviewed journal Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy.

Before pursuing her doctorate, Jill spent five years in London, studying at the London School of Economics and Political Science, working with the last chair of the Greater London Council and in the Constituency office of an East London Member of Parliament. She later returned to New York City and worked with the British Labour party to help organize British expatriate voters. Jill continues to travel widely. In recent years she has presented research on the challenges of political engaging urban migrants in West European and North American cities at the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Pisa, at the Urban Affairs Association Conference in Seattle, at the World Planning Congress in Mexico City, and at the Halle Institute in Atlanta; and closer to home at the Roosevelt House Policy Center of Hunter College, and at Rutgers' Center for Global Studies.

As an advocate for experiential learning and community service, Professor Gross has served as the academic host for the Manhattan Borough President's Community Planning Fellowship Program, as a faculty advisor for the College Now: Model New York City Council Program, and one of the founding educators on the Model NYS Senate Session Project developed with New York State Assembly and Senate Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force. She has previously taught at Barnard and Columbia University, New York University, Brooklyn and Queens College. At Hunter she teaches at the graduate and undergraduate levels in the areas of applied urban research, comparative urban governance, international urban development, democratic theory and popular participation.

Peter Kwong  CV  E-mail
Ph.D. from Columbia University

Peter Kwong is Professor of Asian American Studies and Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, as well as Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is best known for his work on Chinese Americans and on modern Chinese politics. Peter sits on the Board of Directors of several organizations: Downtown Community TV; Manhattan Neighborhood Network; International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship; and The New Press, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of New York Foundation. He is the recipient of a CINE Golden Eagle Award for co-producing a PBS program on immigration, and a Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarship from Hunter College.

His latest books are Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community and Chinese Americans: An Immigrant Experience , co-authored with his wife, Chinese historian Dusanka Miscevic. His other books include Forbidden Workers: Chinese Illegal Immigrants and American Labor , The New Chinatown , and Chinatown, New York: Labor and Politics 1930-1950. Kwong is a regular contributor to The Nation.

Peter Marcotullio  CV   E-mail
Ph.D. from Columbia University

Peter Marcotullio is Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College, City University of New York, where he teaches in the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, the Department of Geography and in the Macaulay Honors College. He is also Senior Fellow at the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities.

Prior to coming to CUNY, Dr. Marcotullio was Adjunct Senior Fellow at the United Nations University, Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), working from the UNU’s Office at the UN, New York. From 2006-2008 he was Visiting Associate Professor, Urban Planning Program, Columbia University. Between 1999 and 2006, Dr. Marcotullio was also teaching full time, first as a Lecturer and then Professor, in the International Urban and Regional Planning lab, Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo.

Dr. Marcotullio’s research interests include urban environmental transition theory, globalization and urban change, ecosystem approaches to urban and regional environmental planning and management and the impacts of urbanization on the environment. He has published over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and books. His edited volumes include Scaling Urban Environmental Challenges: From Local to Global and Back (2007), Earthscan, James & James, Pub, with Gordon McGranahan, Towards Sustainable Cities: East Asian, North American, and European Perspectives on Managing Urban Regions (2004), Ashgate Publishing Limited, with Andre Sorenson and Jill Grant, and Globalization and the Sustainability of Cities in the Asia Pacific Region (2001) UNU Press, with Fu-chen Lo.

Lynn McCormick  CV   E-mail
Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning with a concentration in
Regional Economic Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MS in Urban and Regional Planning from University of Wisconsin-Madison

Before her doctorate, Lynn McCormick worked several years as a practicing planner in a variety of community and economic development agencies, such a Community Action Program in southern Wisconsin, the Chicago Housing Authority, and the Massachusetts Office of Communities and Development.  Her research focuses on community development in a global economic environment, most recently looking at workforce development intermediaries like business associations. She teaches courses on regional economic development and industrial policy, workforce development and employment policy, public policy analysis, and planning history.

Susan Turner Meiklejohn CV   E-mail
Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Susan Turner Meiklejohn is Associate Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College. Before beginning her Ph.D., Professor Meiklejohn worked for over ten years as an urban planner addressing community planning, urban economic development, historic preservation, and urban design issues. Her research, for which she has won awards from the Urban Affairs Association and the Association of the Collegiate Schools of Planning, has until recently focused on the effects of geographic segregation and racial discrimination on job search. Meiklejohn is now undertaking an ethnographic study of the possible interrelationship between interethnic friendships and political activity in her own neighborhood: Sunnyside, Queens, where 60 percent of the population is comprised of newly-arrived immigrants from over 68 source countries.

William Milczarski, AICP  E-mail
Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan

An expert in transportation planning and environmental policy, Professor Milczarski has done research and consulting in both areas.  As an advisor to the New York City Parks Council, he evaluated alternatives to the controversial West Side Highway replacement road.  He has analyzed bank lending practices in New York State and in many other American cities.

Stanley Moses, Department Chair  CV   E-mail
Ph.D. in Political Science from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University

Stanley Moses is the current Chair of the department. He has been at Hunter since 1971. His major research interests have been related to the goal of full employment, equality of educational opportunity, and the changing structure of urban and regional development. These interests have been related to service at the federal, state, and local levels of government in various consulting and staff roles. His areas of teaching have emphasized these concerns at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. He co-authored, with Edwin Margolis, The Elusive Quest, The Struggle for Equality of Educational Opportunity and edited Enduring Visions, The Legacy of Bertram Gross. An article on "Urban Places" was published in the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences.

Laxmi Ramasubramanian CV  E-mail  Publication  
Ph.D (Architecture, Environment-Behavior Studies), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Master in City Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Before coming to the United States to go to graduate school, Professor Ramasubramanian practiced as an architect in her home country India, after receiving a Bachelors and a Masters degree in Architecture from the University of Madras. She has traveled widely, and has lived and worked in New Zealand, Australia and in Boston, Milwaukee, Washington DC, and Chicago before coming to New York. She seeks to inform and transform planning policy and its practice in order to create a just and equitable society.

Professor Ramasubramanian investigates planning and decision-making processes at different spatial scales. Her research has uncovered that GIS use by relatively powerless actors (community-based organizations, for example) alters the nature of knowledge creation and thereby the discursive strategies they can use to solve strategic planning problems. Her research falls within the larger umbrella of Critical GIS research (studies that examine how GIS adoption and use can alter social and political processes and the power of individuals and institutions).

Professor Ramasubramanian has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator of 15 research projects over the past eight years. Presently, she manages three active research projects. Her work is currently supported by the New York State Department of Transportation and the United States Federal Transit Administration. Professor Ramasubramanian is currently working on a book on Public Participation and Geographic Information Science to be published in 2008 by Springer.

Sigmund C. Shipp E-mail
Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning with a concentration in economic
and community development from Cornell University

Sigmund Shipp has completed research in a variety of areas that have this common theme: a concern for the poor and disadvantaged especially those in African-American communities. His planning research history began with a dissertation that examined locational patterns of black business ownership nationwide. Over time, his interests shifted to worker-ownership and its role in improving conditions in black communities.

Over the past several years, Sigmund's teaching has focused on two undergraduate courses (1. urban plans and policies and 2. methods of urban research and policy analysis) and two graduate courses (1. planning for economic development and 2. education plans and policies).

Currently Shipp is involved in research that pertains to black churches' and colleges' CDCs (community development corporations) and their revival of poor black communities. Sponsored by the Ford Foundation, this national research project is the first to be a comparative study of black churches and college CDCs and the first to examine black college CDCs.

He has served for the past three years as Vice-chair for Policy for the Planning Black and the Community Division of the American Planning Association. In this capacity, he spearheaded the development of an undergraduate scholarship program for African-Americans in planning programs and of an effort to get criminal justices issues added to the national policy agenda of the APA.

Joseph P. Viteritti E-mail Publications  
Ph.D. in Political Science, City University of New York

Joseph Viteritti is the Blanche D. Blank Professor of Public Policy and Director of the graduate program in Urban Affairs. He specializes in education policy, state & local governance, and public law. He has published nine books and more than one hundred articles and essays, including The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public Square (Princeton University Press, forthcoming); Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society (Brookings Institution Press); Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil Society (Yale University Press) (Edited with Diane Ravitch); and Across the River: Politics and Education in the City (Holmes & Meier). His essays have appeared in law reviews, social science journals and popular media such as the New York Times and Washington Post . He has been on the editorial boards of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and the Public Administration Quarterly . He has previously taught at Princeton, NYU, Harvard and SUNY, Albany.

Professor Viteritti has an extensive record of public service. He is presently on the Steering Committee of the National Campaign for Civic Education in Schools (Justice Sandra Day O'Connor & Governor Roy Romer, Honorary Co-chairs). He has been a special assistant to the Chancellor of Schools (Frank Macchiarola) in New York City and a senior advisor to the superintendents of schools in Boston (Robert Spillane) and San Francisco (Bill Rojas). He has served on a number of blue ribbon panels at the state and local levels of government in New York, where he was a member of the State Attorney General's Advisory Panel on Nonpublic Schools (appointed by Eliot Spitzer), Executive Director of the State Charter Commission for Staten Island (appointed by Governor Mario Cuomo), Executive Director of the State Temporary Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Compensation (appointed by Governor Mario Cuomo), and Executive Director of the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Police Management and Personnel Policy (appointed by Edward Koch). He was also an advisor to the Charter Commission that wrote the present City Charter and the Districting Commission that drew the current district boundaries for the City Council.

He received his Ph.D. in political science from the City University of New York and is a proud graduate of Hunter College. He is chair of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Faculty Seminar on Public Policy at the college.

Elaine W. Walsh, CSW E-mail
Ph.D. from Fordham University

Elaine Walsh teaches in the areas of management and strategic planning for non-profit organizations, and social policy and planning. She currently teaches the urban affairs capstone seminar and internship. She has taught Non Profit Management; Strategic Planning, and the core Urban Development Workshops in the Graduate Program in Urban Affairs. She also teaches courses at the undergraduate level including seminars in the Public Service Scholar Program. Her research interests are in the areas of child and family services, school linked school services, leadership development, civic participation, program development, and non-profit organizations. Her publications include articles on children's services; Social Policy and Legislative Change , Services for Children, and Should Adoption Records Be Opened, No ! , Hunter College Liberty Partnership Program , and monographs on the NYC Administration for Children's Services Network/Spa systems .

Her current research and writing focuses on university/school-linked services, collaboration in service delivery and the impact of the public service scholar program on its participants. She is principal investigator of a New York State Education Department grant designed to develop strategies to reduce the school dropout rate.

 

Adjunct Faculty (partial list)

Albert F. Appleton (Al Appleton) is an international consultant with interlocking expertise in water resource and water utility management, infrastructure and public finance, land use and landscape preservation, and promoting sustainable development through innovative financial strategies such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and monetizing the cost savings from sustainable development. His most recent work includes developing a new system of financing environmental infrastructure for the City of Shanghai water and sewer system, creating a program to integrate biofuel development with the restoration of Tisza River floodplain in Hungary, creating a program to preserve the ecologically unique Maramures plateau in Romanian Transylvania by a combination of sustainable agriculture and ecotourism, assisting the implementation of payment for ecosystem service programs in the Northern Andes. He is also a member of the Katoomba Group (a worldwide network of experts on the use of market tools to address environmental problems), a special consultant to Ecosystem Investment Partners (EIP), a new investment fund seeking to provide market rate investment returns while innovatively funding land preservation, an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Hunter College graduate program in Urban Affairs and Planning, where he teaches courses on Sustainability, its planning and its economics, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Reason Foundation, a Libertarian think tank.
 

Alice Blank is an architect and principal of a blank architect in New York City. She studied architecture at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, Columbia University and received her Masters Degree in Architecture from the University of Virginia in 1986. In addition to her design practice, Ms. Blank has taught architecture at the Catholic University of America, the University of Pennsylvania and is currently an adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College.

For the past few years, Ms. Blank has researched the islands that comprise the city of New York. She worked on a team presenting a plan for the future development of Governors Island and launched the design competition Ideas Afloat to consider development ideas for the future of Davids Island for the city of New Rochelle.

Ms. Blank is particularly interested in the future of urban public space and believes strongly in the value of the public competition as a means to uncover the best solutions to the programming and design of these places.
 

Calvin T. Brown works as a city planner in the Manhattan Division of the Department of City Planning. He is the Community Liaison/Project Manager for Community District 10 in Central Harlem. He is also a graduate of the Hunter College Urban Affairs and Planning program.
 

Donovan Finn is a PhD candidate in Regional Planning at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), where he has worked predominantly in the areas of environmental justice and sustainable land use planning with communities in Chicago, Peoria and St. Louis. His areas of specialization are regional planning, sustainable development and participatory planning. He holds a Masters Degree in Urban Planning from the University of Illinois.
 

Barry Hersh, AICP brings extensive experience in both city planning and development, especially of environmental projects, to the land use and other courses he teaches at Hunter. He is also Associate Director, Education for the Newman Real Estate Institute and teaches courses in real estate finance and development, urban economics, and sustainability at Baruch College. Mr. Hersh was Planning Director for Poughkeepsie, New York and Toledo, Ohio, and also teaches brownfield redevelopment for the US EPA.
 

Mitchell A. Korbey, Esq. is an urban planner and an attorney with Herrick, Feinstein LLP, a full service New York law firm with one of the City's largest and busiest real estate practices. Prior to joining Herrick, Professor Korbey served as a Commissioner on the City's Board of Standards and Appeals, having been appointed to a full 6-year term in 1998 by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.  Before his appointment, Professor Korbey was Director of the New York City Planning Department's Brooklyn Borough Office. Professor Korbey has a graduate degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Cornell University and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School.

Mike Lamb is a doctoral candidate in Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, with a particular interest in suburban development and trespass. He has presented his research to audiences ranging from geographers to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police--in such far-flung locales as Rome, Izmir, and Columbia, South Carolina. He received his B.A. from Occidental College in Los Angeles and has published articles in Urban Affairs Review, Arcade, Proliferation, Hit it or Quit It, and other journals. He also serves as Graduate Fellowship Advisor for the Macaulay Honors College. He lives in Manhattan with his lovely wife Lulu and two cats.
 

Scott Larson (Graduate Teaching Fellow) is working on a Ph.D in human geography in the Earth and Environmental Sciences department at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include critical and urban geography, and his dissertation research focuses on the relationship between the legacies of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses and contemporary discourse over development in New York City. He earned a Masters' Degree in geography from Hunter College in 2005.
 

Kathryne Leak's career as an Anthropologist and Social Worker has given her broad experience in social work administration and ethnography. She has provided direct counseling and training, and has evaluated programs, written grant proposals, and advocated for disadvantaged populations in her roles as project director, evaluation director, staff developer and adjunct professor. Kathryne currently serves as the Fourth Vice President on the Alumni Association of Hunter College, and a board member for the United States Selective Service System Local Board 123 for the State of New York. She holds a BA in sociology from Hunter College, a MSW from Columbia University in Social Work Administration, and received her CSW certification from the State of New York. In 2003, she received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University with a specialization in Applied Anthropology.
 

Phil Plotch is the Director of World Trade Center Redevelopment and Special Projects at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Previously, Phil was the Manager of Planning at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where he led numerous policy and planning initiatives. Phil is a proud 1992 graduate of Hunter's Urban Planning program.
 

Randall Quan has over 15 years of experience in the nonprofit sector in a variety of capacities. Currently, he is the Managing Director at Community Resource Exchange, an organization that provides management consulting and technical assistance to nonprofits in New York City. He received an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Dartmouth College.
 

Robert C. Rosenberg, President of Rosenberg Housing Group Inc., has over forty years of experience in affordable housing and urban revitalization as a real estate developer, builder, former New York City public housing commissioner, policy maker, lawyer, and academic. In addition to overseeing the Rosenberg Housing Group Inc., Mr. Rosenberg is Judicial Administrator for Development of the Chester Housing Authority, in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he is credited with transforming the economically and socially despondent community of 36,000.

A recognized authority and industry leader, Mr. Rosenberg has lectured at Harvard University, the Beijing Institute of Design, the University of Nancy (France), Columbia University, and New York University. He has addressed The National League of Cities, been published on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times and authored numerous articles in industry trade journals. He is a member of the Inner City Committee by ULI and the Affordable Housing Forum by the ABA. Currently Mr. Rosenberg is an adjunct professor in the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College where he teaches a graduate level seminar in real estate development and economics.

He holds a B.S from New York University (1955) and an LLB from Columbia Law school (1958). He was admitted to the NYS bar in 1959.
 

Joseph Salvo is director of the Population Division at the New York City Department of City Planning, where he was previously deputy director and senior demographer. His background includes a year at the U.S. Census Bureau in 1981-82. He has broad experience in immigration, the application of small-area data for policies and programs, and the uses of census data. A past president of the Association of Public Data Users, he has experience with the Census Bureau's Master Address File and TIGER geographic database, as well as the American Community Survey. A member of the Committee on National Statistics' Panel on Research on Future Census Methods (2010 Census panel), he chaired the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) working group jointly sponsored by that panel and the Panel to Review the 2000 Census. He is an adjunct Associate Professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning Department at Hunter College of the City University of New York. Dr. Salvo received M.A. and Ph.D degrees in sociology from Fordham University, is a recipient of the Sloan Public Service Award from the Fund for the City of New York, and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.
 

Since 2002, Lisa Schreibman has worked in the Capital Programs area of the Department of Subways. There she assists with development of the 5- and 20-year plans and plays a project management role in many of the agency's technology projects. She worked as a community organizer on open space and greening issues from 1992-2002. She has been an adjunct at Hunter since 2000 and graduated from the Masters Program in Urban Planning in 1997. She earned her B.A. from NYU in 1992. From 2003 to 2006 she served as the School Liaison for the APA Metro Chapter.

Pablo Vengoechea E-mail
M.S.U.P. from Columbia University

Pablo Vengoechea is Vice Chairman of the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission, having formerly been the Director of the New York City Department of City Planning's Staten Island Office. In October 2001, Vengoechea received an award for excellence from the Site Planning Fundamentals Program of the American Planning Association.

 

Emeriti Faculty

Steve Johnston, M. Arch., M.S.U.D., Ph.D. in Urban Planning, Columbia University. A registered architect, Professor Johnston uses his design background and computer expertise in his teaching and in a variety of research contexts. He has studied energy-conserving site and building design, as well as energy-sensitive state and local development ordinances. Johnston has worked in research related to mortgage banking practices including research grants from the NYS Division of Human Rights and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He studied home-buying experiences by Dominican and Korean immigrants in northern Queens, NYC. He has been part of a funded program that developed inter-disciplinary graduate courses available via the Internet to students from various CUNY campuses.

Hans Spiegel, Professor Emeritus, M.A., Ed.D. in Intergroup Relations, Columbia University/ Community Development, Citizen Participation. Former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the United States Urban Renewal Administration and member of Presidential Task Forces on Poverty and Urban Problems. Editor of the three-volume Citizen Participation in Urban Development. A scholar of international rank, Spiegel has served as a visiting professor and research scholar in several countries, including the Philippines, India, Korea, Germany and Kenya. Since his retirement, he has continued teaching part time in the graduate program.

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