Among the nation’s academic leaders, Emory’s graduate faculty shapes higher education in lasting ways—whether lecturing, mentoring students and postdocs, conducting research, or serving the community. Graduate faculty members strive for excellence in teaching and scholarship. They attract the best students, guide new scholars, and create knowledge for the advancement of humanity.
As the son of a bread delivery driver in Philadelphia, Michael Rich traveled the city before dawn in his father’s truck. It was the early 1960s, when many of Philadelphia’s downtown neighborhoods were lined with abandoned buildings and crumbling houses. “I thought people shouldn’t have to live like that,” he says, and he has devoted his career to improving low-income communities.
Emory recruited Rich, who is now an associate professor of political science, for his expertise in urban affairs. Nationally known for his work in welfare policy and urban revitalization, he helps Emory graduate students incorporate service into the classes they teach and align their research efforts with real-world problems.
Rich’s approach is to focus on a community’s strengths as well as its needs, creating practical, enduring solutions. In 2000 he helped found the Office of University and Community Partnerships (OUCP), which connects Emory’s intellectual resources with agencies and organizations working to raise the quality of life in distressed Atlanta communities. The OUCP helped the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation take a great idea—fighting childhood obesity with “fitness zones” in low-income areas—and make it work. Today five fitness zones reach nearly 12,000 Atlanta young people.
Your gift will help faculty members share the best of themselves—the passion for their disciplines that makes them great teachers—with students and the larger community.
