Steven Cohen

Steven Cohen

Executive Director, The Earth Institute

Director, Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy, Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs and Earth Institute

Director, Concentration in Environmental Policy Studies, Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs
sc32@columbia.edu

From 1998 to 2001 Cohen was Vice Dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. From 1985 to 1998 he was the Director of Columbia's Graduate Program in Public Policy and Administration. From 1987-1998 Cohen was Associate Dean for Faculty and Curriculum at SIPA.

He is a graduate of James Madison High School in Brooklyn (1970), Franklin College of Indiana (1974) and the State University of New York at Buffalo (M.A., 1977; Ph.D., 1979). In 1976-77 Cohen was a Ford Foundation Fellow in Urban Environmental Policy; in 1978-79 he was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Public and Environmental Policy and Implementation.

Cohen served as a policy analyst in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1977 through 1978 and 1980-81, and as consultant to the agency from 1981 through 1991, from 1994 to 1996 and from 2005 to the present. From 1990-94, Cohen served on the Board of the Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs; he has also served on the Executive Committee and Committee on Accreditation and Peer Review of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. From 2001 to 2004 he served on the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology. He serves on the Board of Directors of Homes for the Homeless.

Cohen is the author of The Effective Public Manager (1988), Understanding Environmental Policy (forthcoming) and the co-author of Environmental Regulation Through Strategic Planning (1991), Total Quality Management in Government (1993), The New Effective Public Manager (1995), Tools for Innovators: Creative Strategies for Managing Public Sector Organizations (1998), The Effective Public Manager (2002) (Third Edition), Strategic Planning in Environmental Regulation (2005), and numerous articles on public management innovation, public ethics and environmental management.

Cohen has taught courses in public management, policy analysis, environmental policy and management innovation. In 1982 Cohen developed, and until 2001 directed, Columbia's Workshops in Applied Public Management and Applied Policy Analysis; bringing practical professional education into the center of Columbia's public administration curriculum. He has conducted professional training seminars in total quality management, strategic planning, project management and management innovation.

Cohen was born in Orange, New Jersey on September 6, 1953, and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He now resides in New York City with his wife, Donna Fishman and their two wonderful daughters, Gabriella and Ariel.

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