Policy People

New faces at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy are (top, left to right) Irina A. Chindea, Christopher Clary, Kenneth Coates and Mila Gascó-Hernández, and (bottom, left to right) Luis Felipe Luna-Reyes, Lucy C. Sorensen, Angela VanDerwerken and Timothy Weaver.

ALBANY, N.Y. (Oct. 20, 2016) — The Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy has added eight new faculty members, in international relations, economics, public policy and political science. Two other faculty members were promoted.

The new hires strengthen the College’s mission of preparing leaders who will shape the public policies of the future, as well as supporting the growth of the University’s new College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, which draws heavily on faculty from Rockefeller.

Rockefeller College recently added a new master’s program — the Master of International Affairs (MIA) degree — and expanded its Washington semester to cover both Spring and Fall semesters.

“These new faculty are critical to the roll-out of our MIA degree and the extension of our national and internationally-ranked programs in policy analysis and government information strategy and management,” said Interim Dean R. Karl Rethemeyer. “We look forward to their contributions to research and instruction over the next several years.”

New Faculty

Irina A. Chindea is a visiting assistant professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science.

Chindea is a research fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She has done extensive research on criminal organizations, particularly on the U.S.-Mexico border, in Colombia, El Salvador, Canada, and in gang-infested areas of Los Angeles. Her teaching and research interests include irregular warfare, cooperation and conflict among non-state armed groups and U.S. foreign policy.

She has a PhD in International Relations and a master’s from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Christopher Clary is as assistant professor of political science. His research focuses interstate rivalries, nuclear proliferation, U.S. defense policy and the politics of South Asia.   

He was a predoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and country director for South Asian affairs in Office of the Secretary of Defense. He received his PhD in Political Science from MIT, and a master’s in National Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School.

Kenneth Coates joins the faculty as a member of the economics team for the Master of International Affairs program.

He studies macroeconomics of development, international finance and central banking, and his career has included multilateral institutions, national government and academia. He was director general at Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinamericanos (the association of central banks in Latin America and the Caribbean, on the board at the World Bank and began his career at the International Monetary Fund after earning a PhD in Economics at Stanford University.

Mila Gascó-Hernández is an associate research director for UAlbany’s Center for Technology in Government and a research associate professor at Rockefeller College.

She was a senior researcher at the Center for Public Governance at ESADE Business & Law School, heading research in e-governance, open government and smart cities. She was a senior analyst at the International Institute on Governance of Catalonia, and has consulted for a wide variety of organizations, including the United Nations Development Program. She holds a PhD in Public Management from the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, and an MBA from the ESADE Business & Law School and Polytechnical University of Catalonia.

Luis Felipe Luna-Reyes is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy. His research interests include interorganizational collaboration, information sharing, success of government-wide websites and information policy.

His work has been funded by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología in México, the National Science Foundation, the Fondo de Información y Documentación para la Industria in México, and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Luna-Reyes received his PhD in Information Science from the University at Albany.

Lucy C. Sorensen is an assistant professor of public administration and policy. Her research explores interactions between education and human development, with a focus on how policy interventions can reduce educational and economic inequality.

Sorensen is a visiting fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government and a member of the National Science Foundation Network of Scholars and State Education Policy Leaders. She received her PhD from Duke University in the Sanford School of Public Policy.

Angela VanDerwerken is an adjunct lecturer in international affairs and will teach Quantitative Approaches to International Affairs.

VanDerwerken is an economist focusing on econometrics, health policy and the economics of labor. Her research includes federal disability policy, and has been supported by a grant from the U.S. Social Security Administration and a fellowship from Mathematica’s Center for Studying Disability Policy. She also teaches in the Department of Economics at the University.

Timothy Weaver is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science. He was assistant professor of urban politics at the University of Louisville.

His research interests include urban policy, politics and economy, American political development, British politics, race and class. He has master’s and PhD in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rockefeller College’s Meredith Weiss, left, was promoted to full professor, and Ellen Rubin was granted tenure and named an associate professor.

Faculty Promotions

Meredith Weiss, a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and director of Rockefeller College’s Semester in Washington Program, has been promoted to the rank of professor.

Weiss’ research focuses on comparative politics in Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. She is a former chair of the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies and a member of the AAS Program Committee.

She received her PhD and master’s in Political Science from Yale University.

Ellen Rubin, a faculty member in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, has been granted tenure and promoted to associate professor.

Rubin’s research is rooted in traditional public administration, public management and public personnel management. Rubin was an advisor to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s Commission on Spending and Government Efficiency. She earned her PhD in Public Administration from the University of Georgia and her master’s from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

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