Appendix D
Biographical Sketches of Steering Committee Members
David L. Brown (Chair) is professor and chair of the department of sociology at Cornell University and the co-director of the Community and Regional Development Institute. His areas of expertise are in demography, migration, urbanization, and community. His current projects include the political economy of rural and regional development in the United States and in ex-socialist eastern Europe; how social mobilities are reshaping the urban-rural periphery; commuting behavior among rural in-migrants in England and the United States; the process through which amenity-based areas become destinations for older in-migrants and maintain that status over time; and the social and economic implications of natural population decrease including the lived experience of residents of such areas and the association between natural population decrease and economic activity over time. He received his Ph.D. in sociology/demography from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
James Fitzsimmons is assistant division chief in Geographic Studies and Information Resources, Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau. He leads the Census Bureau’s analytical work on the geographic distribution of population, both in the United States and other countries. Current projects include preparation of subnational population data for countries outside the United States for use in humanitarian assistance following disasters. He served as chair of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Metropolitan Area Standards Review Committee for the updating of standards in 2000 and 2013. This committee recommended the changes
to the definitions of metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas that were adopted by OMB prior to the release of data from the decennial census. He has a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Stephan Goetz is professor of agricultural and regional economics at the College of Agricultural Sciences at Pennsylvania State University. As director of the Northeast Center, he provides leadership for economic and community development research and extension activities across 13 states. Part of this responsibility includes linking state activities to national and regional initiatives. An underlying theme of his research program is the role of markets and human capital in stimulating economic growth and development, and in reducing poverty. Current research interests include social network analysis, regional food systems, self-employment, and targeted economic development. He has a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Michigan State University.
Mark Partridge is the C. William Swank chair of rural urban policy at Ohio State University and a professor in the agricultural, environment, and development economics department. He is also a faculty research affiliate of the City Region Studies Center, University of Alberta. Dr. Partridge’s current research interests include investigating rural urban interdependence, why some communities grow faster than others, and innovations in regional policy and governance. He is co-editor of the Journal of Regional Science and is on the executive council of the Regional Science Association International. Dr. Partridge has consulted with the OECD, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, various governments in the United States and Canada; and he is currently working a project for the European Commission. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois.
David Allen Plane is professor in the school of geography and regional development at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His research interests are population (migration), transportation, regional science, regional development, and quantitative modeling. His research focuses on population geography, U.S. migration and settlement patterns, the role of the life course in affecting mobility, and methods for modeling temporal change in spatial interaction systems. In 2001-2002 and again in 2011, he was a visiting researcher at the U.S. Census Bureau. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Panel on Addressing Priority Technical Issues for the Next Decade of the American Community Survey. He has a Ph.D. in regional science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Brigitte S. Waldorf is professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. In her research, she combines a topical interest in population, urban and transportation issues with a methodological interest in spatial and quantitative analysis. Among her research topics are immigration, regional demographic change due to migration and fertility, the growth of a knowledge-based workforce, the urban-rural interface, and access to health care. She has an M.A. in geography and an M.A. in mathematics from the Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf, Germany, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Illinois.
This page intentionally left blank.
