Faculty & Staff Directory

Rick Campanelli

Rick Campanelli is a lecturer at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Campanelli has an extensive career in public service and the private sector as well as experience in senior leadership and management. Campanelli has been legal counsel in the areas of healthcare, information privacy and security, and civil and First Amendment rights. He is the Center for Christian Study Director of Graduate Ministries for the Law and Darden Christian Fellowships.

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Benjamin Castleman

Benjamin
Castleman

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Education
Garrett Hall L036

Ben Castleman is an associate professor of public policy and education at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on policies and strategies to improve postsecondary educational and workforce outcomes for individuals from lower-income and historically-marginalized communities. His current work focuses on innovations to increase economic mobility among lower-wage adults, including digital- and health-skills training programs; state-funded career and technical education; and competency-based education models for working adults.

 

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Eileen Chou

Eileen
Chou

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Batten Family Bicentennial Teacher-Scholar Leadership Associate Professor of Public Policy

Eileen Chou, associate dean for academic affairs and Batten Family Bicentennial Teacher-Scholar Leadership Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, researches the organizational, social, and psychological forces that shape individual and group behavior in organizational settings.

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Pam Cipriano

Pam
Cipriano

Professor of Nursing and Public Policy
CMNEB 2022

Pamela Cipriano is a professor of nursing and public policy at the Batten School. Cipriano served as dean of the UVA School of Nursing and the Sadie Heath Cabaniss Professor of Nursing through July 2022. Cipriano’s more than 40-year career in nursing is marked by a focus on improving the safety and efficiency of care by ensuring a healthy, safe, and supportive work environment and encouraging healthy behaviors to promote well-being.

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Michele Claiborn

Michele
Claibourn

Assistant Professor of Public Policy

Michele Claibourn is an assistant professor of public policy at the Batten School and Director of Equitable Analysis for The Equity Center at UVA.  Claibourn leads the Center’s community-engaged data science work in support of a more equitable and just region. She has directed or supervised multiple community-based research projects in the Charlottesville community, including racial equity studies for the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless.

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Benjamin Converse

Benjamin
Converse

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Psychology

Benjamin Converse is an associate professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Department of Psychology. His research focuses on motivation, social judgment, problem solving and decision making. He teaches courses related to leadership and negotiations.

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Kevin Cope

Kevin
Cope

Associate Professor of Law and Public Policy

Kevin Cope is an associate professor of law and public policy at the Batten School and an associate professor of law at UVA's School of Law. Cope’s research focuses on the measurement of legal and political phenomena. Substantively, he is most interested in the law and politics of international institutions, migration, and relationships between domestic institutional structure and international behavior. He is a faculty affiliate at the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics.

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George Foresman

George
Foresman

NSPC Executive Director & Senior Advisor

George Foresman has over three decades of leadership experience in government and business. While serving as Virginia’s homeland security secretary, Foresman was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security.

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Galen Fountain

Galen Fountain is a lecturer at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Previously, he served for nearly two decades as Clerk of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies and prior to that as Counsel to the Senate Committee on Small Business. 

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Leora Friedberg

Leora
Friedberg

Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy; Chair, Department of Economics
Monroe 257 (appointment only)

Leora Friedberg is an associate professor of economics and public policy at the Batten School and an associate professor and Vice Chair at UVA's Department of Economics. Her focus is on labor economics, including research on social security, aging and retirement economic impacts.

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James Savage

James
Savage

Professor of Politics and Public Policy

James D. Savage is a professor of politics and public policy at the Batten School and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. His research and teaching focus on comparative budgetary, fiscal, and macroeconomic policy, with an emphasis on the United States, the European Union, Iraq and Japan. He is particularly interested in the development of macrobudgetary rules, procedures, and institutions in these countries, and how they influence fiscal outcomes.

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Abigail Scholer

Abigail
Scholer

Batten Family Bicentennial Distinguished Leadership Professor of Public Policy
Garrett Hall 107

As of Fall 2023, Abigail Scholer is Batten Family Bicentennial Distinguished Leadership Professor of Public Policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Broadly, she researches the dynamic, complex, and often confounding world of human motivation and self-regulation: What makes us reach for the stars, huddle in a corner, get out of bed, help others, break our diets, save for retirement, follow rules, and color outside the lines? Scholer studies fundamental and basic processes related to goal pursuit, decision-making, social regulation, motivated social cognition, and behavior change, with an aim for understanding how these basic processes can be leveraged to address societal challenges and improve people’s lives.

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Beth Schueler

Beth
Schueler

Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy
Ruffner Hall 268

Beth Schueler is an assistant professor of education and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Schueler studies education policy, politics, and inequality with a focus on efforts to improve low-performing K-12 schools and districts.

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Todd Sechser

Todd
S.
Sechser

Professor of Politics and Public Policy
S182 Gibson Hall

Todd S. Sechser is a professor of politics and public policy at the Batten School and the Pamela Feinour Edmonds and Franklin S. Edmonds Jr. Discovery Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Sechser is also a Senior Fellow at UVA's Miller Center. His research interests include coercive diplomacy, emerging technologies, nuclear security and political violence

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Jay Shimshack

Jay
Shimshack

Professor of Public Policy and Economics

Jay Shimshack is a professor of public policy and economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Shimshack's research focuses on environmental regulation, environmental economics, corporate social behavior, and applied microeconomics for public policy. 

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William Shobe

William
Shobe

Research Professor of Public Policy; Director, Center for Economic and Policy Studies, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service

William Shobe is research professor of public policy at the Batten School and the Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Shobe's current research includes emission market and auction design, environmental federalism, improved economic modeling of Virginia’s economy, state economic development incentives and state economic forecasting.

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Shelly Smith

Shelly
Smith

Associate Professor of Nursing and Public Policy

Shelly Porter Smith is an associate professor of nursing and public policy at Batten. Prior to her appointment at UVA, Smith mentored faculty scholars in legislative advocacy, proposal and grant writing, and authoring policy briefs and white paper as a Translational Research Fellow in Residence at VCU in addition to serving as director of nursing graduate programs.  Smith is a long-time preceptor to UVA nurse practitioner master's students, and part of the Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority’s nursing preceptor incentive program work group.

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Ian Solomon

Ian
H.
Solomon

Dean and Professor of Practice of Public Policy
Garrett Hall 200

Ian H. Solomon is dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, where he leads a multidisciplinary faculty in creating new knowledge and developing leaders who can solve humanity’s greatest policy challenges. Trained as a lawyer, Solomon is a devoted student and teacher of both negotiation and conflict resolution.

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Allan Stam

Allan
Stam

University Professor of Public Policy and Politics

Allan C. Stam is a University Professor of public policy and politics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. His research focuses on the dynamics of armed conflict between and within states. Stam has also worked on several survey-based projects including surveys conducted in Russia, Rwanda, India and the United States.

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