Allard Appointed Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Urban Network
The University of Chicago Urban Network is pleased to announce the appointment of Scott W. Allard, Associate Professor at the School of Social Service Administration, as Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Urban Network. Professor Allard succeeds Mario Small, Professor of Sociology, who launched the Urban Network in 2010 and was recently named Dean of the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.
The Urban Network is a faculty-led initiative devoted to fostering innovation in urban research and building cross-disciplinary connections between urban researchers. Through its growing portfolio of projects, the Urban Network aims to be a hub for faculty, students, policy makers, and others interested in urban social science, both in the US and cross-nationally. The Urban Network also seeks opportunities to convene local scholars, experts, and leaders to engage issues of importance to the City of Chicago and the University of Chicago's community partners.
Currently, the University of Chicago Urban Network maintains the Urban Portal, a one-stop web resource for the latest in urban research at the University of Chicago, as well as prominent urban research activities that occur nationally and internationally. The Urban Network also hosts the University of Chicago Urban Forums, an annual conference series that convenes leading urban scholars to engage research on some of the most pressing topics confronting cities today. A number of new initiatives will launch during the 2012-13 academic year, including an Urban Doctoral Fellows program to support graduate student research and programming for undergraduate students that identifies innovative training, service, or career opportunities in urban locales.
Allard's primary areas of expertise are poverty in metropolitan and rural America, trends in social welfare policy, and the role of nonprofit organizations in the safety net. He is the author of Out of Reach: Place, Poverty, and the New American Welfare State (Yale University Press, 2009). In addition, he is currently working on a book project entitled, Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty and the American Safety Net, with support from the Russell Sage Foundation. Apart from his faculty appointment at the University of Chicago, Professor Allard is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program and a research affiliate of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.
For more information about the University of Chicago Urban Network and its programs or events, please visit the Urban Network, or contact Caroline Ouwerkerk, Project Manager, University of Chicago Urban Network at 773.702.5116.