Directors
Edmund Beard
Director of the Center for Democracy and Development
Acting Director of the Center for State and Local Policy
(617) 287-5538
edmund.beard@umb.edu
Edmund Beard is the former dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies. A political scientist, Professor Beard is the founding director of the former McCormack Institute, director of the Center for Democracy and Development, and former chairperson of the UMass Boston Political Science department. He is a specialist in American government, the political process, and political behavior. Dr. Beard also has interests in economic and political change in the areas of the former Soviet Union.
Donna Friedman
Director of the Center for Social Policy
(617) 287-5565
donna.friedman@umb.edu
Donna Haig Friedman directs the Center for Social Policy. In addition to her leadership role, she specializes in policy analysis and research on family homelessness. She is the author of Parenting in Public: Family Shelter and Public Assistance (Columbia University Press, 2000). Donna also teaches research methods and policy analysis at the McCormack Graduate School's Masters Program in Public Affairs and Ph.D. Program in Public Policy, and she is a McCormack Graduate School Senior Fellow. She received her Ph.D. in social welfare policy at the Heller School, Brandeis University in 1996.
Carol Hardy-Fanta
Director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy
(617) 287-5546
carol.hardy-fanta@umb.edu
Carol Hardy-Fanta is Director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy as well as a Senior Fellow at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Public Policy from Brandeis University's Heller School, an MSW from Smith College, and a B.A. from Occidental College. Dr. Hardy-Fanta is author of two books: Latina Politics, Latino Politics: Gender, Culture, and Political Participation in Boston (Temple University Press, 1993) and Latino Politics in Massachusetts: Struggles, Strategies and Prospects (Routledge Press, 2002). She is a nationally recognized scholar on Latina/o politics and has published widely on the intersection of gender, race and ethnicity in politics and public policy. Her policy experience also includes welfare reform, substance abuse and criminal justice, community organization, abortion rights, mental health, HIV/AIDS programs, and bilingual education. Carol Hardy-Fanta also serves as Director of the Graduate Certificate Program for Women in Politics and Public Policy.
Ellen Hume
Director of the Center on Media and Society
ellen.hume@umb.edu
Ellen Hume is a former White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, former executive director of the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, and former director of PBS's Democracy Project. Starting in 2003, she began teaching at UMB in media and communication studies. She has an extensive background in journalism at the local, national and international levels, as well as a 15-year career in teaching and media analysis. Hume, an experienced national television commentator, appears frequently as a media analyst and trains journalists in American and foreign newsrooms for the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the U.S. Department of State.
Maximiliane Szinovacz
Director of the Gerontology Institute
(617) 287-7300
maxi.szinovacz@umb.edu
Biography to come.