Professor
Kent Portney - Quantitative Methods, Public Policy, Political Behavior
Ph.D., Florida State University, 1979
Kent Portney teaches courses in methodology, judicial politics, public administration, survey research, and environmental politics. He is the author of Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously: Economic Development, the Environment, and Quality of Life in American Cities (MIT Press, 2003), Approaching Public Policy Analysis (Prentice-Hall, 1986), Siting Hazardous Waste Treatment Facilities: The NIMBY Syndrome (Auburn House, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1991), and Controversial Issues in Environmental Policy (Sage Publications, 1992). He is also the co-author of The Rebirth of Urban Democracy (Brookings, 1993), which won the American Political Science Association's 1994 Gladys Kammerer Award for the Best Book in American Politics, and the American Political Science Association Organized Section on Urban Politics' 1994 Best Book in Urban Politics Award; and he is the co-editor of The Distributional Impacts of Public Policies (St. Martin's, 1988). He is also co-editor of Virtual Decisions: Digital Simulations for Teaching Reasoning in the Social Sciences and Humanities published by Lawrence Erlbaum in 2006.
He also has written numerous journal articles and book chapters. His article "Civic Engagement and Sustainable Cities in the U.S." appeared in Public Administration Review (2005), his co-authored article, "Mobilizing Minority Communities: Social Capital and Participation in Urban Neighborhoods," appeared in American Behavioral Scientist, (1997), and his article, "Environmental Justice and Sustainability: Is there a Critical Nexus in the Case of Waste Disposal or Treatment Facility Sitting?" appeared in Fordham Urban Law Journal (1994). Portney has held grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Polaroid Foundation.
He received a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement in Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to support the development of Crime and Punishment, a multimedia simulation of the criminal sentencing process in the felony courts, which was selected as an Internet2 Application Showcase project and was featured at H-NET's Envisioning the Future conference. Professor Portney was recipient of the American Political Science Association's 1997 Rowman and Littlefield Award for innovative teaching in Political Science. He also received the APSA section on Information Technology and Politics Award for best instructional software.
He is co-founder of the Simulation Education and Research Group (SERG), an academic group dedicated to the advancement of digital decision simulations in the social sciences and humanities. Members of this group, working through the Matrix program at Michigan State University, received a 2005-2006 Science of Learning Centers catalyst grant entitled "Science of Social Science Learning." His current research continues to focus on analysis of sustainable cities initiatives in the U.S.
Prof. Portney's Curriculum Vitae
