Six long-time members of the Bloustein School faculty will have retired at the end of the 2019-20 academic year. “These individuals have had an immense impact and have made many wonderful contributions to the Bloustein School, Rutgers University, and the planning, policy, and health disciplines,” said Dean Vonu Thakuriah in an announcement to the school.
Robert Lake retired in June 2020, having previously served as director of the Bloustein School Doctoral Program for six years. He was recognized with numerous prestigious teaching awards within and outside of Rutgers University, including just recently being awarded the American Association of Geographers Distinguished Teaching Honors.
Over a nearly fifty-year career, Bob provided a vibrant and nurturing environment for intellectual discussion and has made innumerable contributions to urban planning and geography through his distinguished teaching, scholarship, and service. He has written or edited eight books, including most recently The Power of Pragmatism: Knowledge Production and Social Inquiry, co-edited by Jane Wills, University of Exeter, with one more in process and more than 57 journal articles and book chapters. He also served as editor of the journal Urban Geography from 1984-2004 and organized the Urban Geography plenary lecture from 2004-2015.
Bob served as dissertation chair or committee member for over 130 doctoral students, many of whom are now leading scholars in the field.
Frank Popper retired as of January 1, 2020, having been a member of the urban planning program since 1983. A distinguished scholar whose work focuses on environmental planning and policy, land use, regional development, and shrinkage planning he has taught, advocated and written widely on these subjects. During his tenure, he chaired the undergraduate Urban Studies program.
Professor Popper’s article “Siting LULUs” (Planning, April 1981) created the concept of Locally Unwanted Land Uses, or LULUs, which have become part of the language of planning and the environmental justice movement. His article “The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust” (Planning, December 1987), written with his wife, Deborah Popper, a geographer at the City University of New York and Princeton University, put forward the controversial Buffalo Commons idea that touched off a national debate on the future of the depopulating rural parts of the Great Plains.
Frank has served on the governing boards of several prominent organizations such as the American Land Forum, the American Land Publishing Project, the American Planning Association, the Citizens Council on Land Use Research and Education, Ecocity Builders, and Urban Ecology. Within the Bloustein School Frank was a ready mentor and sounding board to both students and junior faculty members.
Sandy Jaffe, Co-Director of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, retired in June 2020. Before coming to Rutgers, he served as chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, as an assistant to the United States Attorney General in Washington, D.C., and as officer-in-charge of the Government and Law Program at the Ford Foundation. There he directed its program in government reform, criminal justice, legal education, public interest law, and dispute resolution.
A graduate of Rutgers and Harvard Law School, he is the author of several publications in the fields of dispute resolution, public interest law, and legal education. Sandy has been a member of the graduate faculty at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy for several decades. He served as a member of the Board of Governors at Rutgers University and was chair of its Budget and Finance Committee.
Linda Stamato, Co-Director of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and a member of the graduate faculty at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, retired in June 2020. She is the author of a number of articles on mediation and negotiation and lectures frequently on these subjects.
Linda has authored policy-related opinion columns for the Star-Ledger for many years. Through these writings, she has brought issues of equity, justice, and peace to public attention. A graduate of Rutgers and New York University, she served as a consultant to the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. As a mediator and facilitator, Linda has been involved in a number of cases involving large scale public policy issues as well as disputes involving high management levels in several institutions. Among her many academic accomplishments, she served as Acting Dean of Douglass College.
Linda served on the Board of Governors of Rutgers University during the presidency of Edward J. Bloustein and served as Chairman of the Board for the last three years of her twelve-year term.
Founders of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, established at the RU Law School in Newark and its co-directors since 1986, the Center, along with Lina and Sandy, moved to the Bloustein School in 1995, Sandy and Linda served on the NJ Supreme Court Committee on Dispute Resolution and helped to guide the design and implementation of the state’s court-based programs in dispute resolution. They taught at the National Judicial College for several years as well as in other university venues, including Rutgers’ two Schools of Law, and, since its founding, the Institute for Women’s Leadership Scholars Program.
Both Linda and Sandy have been of great service to the university community, and have taught for many years one of the more popular courses in the Public Policy Program: Negotiation, Law, and Policy: Managing Conflict in Public Contexts.
Henry Coleman and Lyna Wiggins both retired officially last June 2019 but stayed for another year to teach in the school.
Henry Coleman came to Rutgers in 1992 after serving with distinction in a variety of federal and state positions to lead the Center for Government Services, then a component of the Bloustein School. He served as director of the Center for Government Services for 12 years and for the past 15 years, he served as a professor in the Public Policy program, where he has focused on both state and local public finance and poverty and income inequality issues.
A beloved teacher who has mentored a generation of public servants, Henry has been a board member for numerous New Jersey non-profit organizations including the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute, New Jersey City University, New Jersey Policy Perspective, New Jersey Future, Citizens for the Public Good, the Regional Planning Partnership, the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Gateway Institute at Kean University, the Center for State Health Care Strategies, and the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment. He also served on the board of several national non-profit organizations, including the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Henry has also served on transition committees for several gubernatorial administrations in New Jersey, and on other special executive and legislative study commissions in New Jersey.
Lyna Wiggins originally joined the Bloustein School as a member of the Center for Urban Policy Research in 1993 and became a tenured faculty member in the Urban Planning and Policy Development Program specializing in geographic information systems (GIS). She is a pioneer in the development and application of GIS and has become a well-recognized national expert on the subject.
She was the president of the Urban and Regional Information Association, the largest GIS association for GIS professionals in government, and won the Horwood Distinguished Service Award for her work. Lyna’s influential GIS research focus includes studying the use and diffusion of the technology, particularly within U.S. planning agencies; examining the institutional issues in GIS implementation, with a focus on issues of data sharing; designing and implementing appropriate GIS for regional planning agencies; and integrating GIS technology with traditional urban and regional models.
