PARTICIPANTS

RICHARD APPELBAUM
UCSB Global & International Studies

Richard P. Appelbaum, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Global and International Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He currently serves as Director of the M.A. Program in Global & International Studies (www.global.ucsb.edu/magis), and serves on the Executive Committee of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (www.cns.ucsb.edu).  He is also Co-Director of the Center for Global Studies in the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research.  He has previously served as chair of the Sociology Department, and was founder and Acting Director of the UCSB Global & International Studies Program.

He received his B.A. from Columbia University, M.P.A. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

He has received numerous awards and commendations for excellence in teaching, including the UCSB Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in the Social Sciences. He has served as an elected Council Member of the Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association, as well as its President. He is on the Board of Consulting Editors of the Encyclopedia of Housing. He served as a faculty representative to the University of California Advisory Committee on Trademark Licensing, and currently chairs the Advisory Council of the Workers' Rights Consortium (http://www.workersrights.org/). He is the author of the report of the Los Angeles Jewish Commission on Sweatshops, for which he served as a founding member.  He has been a co-PI (and served on the Executive Committees of) the NSF-funded Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (www.csiss.org), Spatial Perspectives on Curriculum Enhancement (http://www.csiss.org/SPACE/), and – currently – the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (www.cns.ucsb.edu).

He has published extensively in the areas of social theory, urban sociology, public policy, the globalization of business, and the sociology of work and labor, and is currently engaged in two principal research projects: a multi-disciplinary study of supply chain networks in the Asian-Pacific Rim, and a study of high technology development (focusing on nanotechnology) in China.

Our academic training for NGO leadership primarily (at its best, at least) involves a critical understanding of the economic, political, and cultural forces that are shaping globalization today - in other words, an understanding of the larger structural framework within which NGOs operate. Related to this is training in basic communication skills - writing clearly, whether it be brief memos to policy-makers or detailed analytic reports; speaking clearly and simply; and the effective use of visual materials (such as powerpoint). We also seek to instill in our students a strong sense of mission - the idea that they can and should make a difference in the world - and arrange for them to meet and talk with a large number of practitioners who do so, from ambassadors and professional politicians (Madeleine Albright, Derek Shearer) to prominent world figures (Jeff Sachs, Greg Mortenson, Muhammad Yunus, Paul Farmer) to leaders of NGOs (Julius Coles, head of Africare; Bene Madunagu, founder of Girls' Power Initiative, Nigeria).  We are still debating the degree to which our training should
provide more concrete skill-sets, such as program evaluation, consensus-building methodologies among stakeholders, or even such basic skills as rudimentary book-keeping skills. Our students' practical training instead comes from a required six month internship with an international NGO (or other organization relevant to their career aspirations); this then feeds into their capstone requirement, an MA-level project (which draws on scholarly knowledge to frame their project, but which emphasizes practical solutions) or an MA thesis (a scholarly work that draws on their experience to advance new knowledge).

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