2004 Election of Officers - Nominees

President-Elect

Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong (University of South Florida)

Board of Directors (vote for no more than 4)

Raphael Bostic (University of Southern California)

Kenya Covington (Congressional Black Caucus Foundation)

Fidel Ezeala-Harrison (Jackson State University)

Lance Freeman (Columbia University)

Susan T. Gooden (Virginia Commonwealth University)

Maury D. Granger (Jackson State University)

Nomination Committee

Gregory N. Price, Chair (Jackson State University)

Mwangi Githinjii (Gettysburg College)

Darrick Hamilton (New School University)

KWABENA GYIMAH-BREMPONG (UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA)

Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong has a B.A. (Hons.) in Economics from the University of Cape Coast (Ghana) and received a Ph D in Economics from Wayne State University in 1981.  He has held teaching positions at New College of the University of South Florida (1982-1988), Wright State University (1988-1994), and University of South Florida at Tampa (1994 to the present) where he currently chairs the Economics Department.   From 2002 to 2004, he was an Economics Program Director at the National Science Foundation.  In 1986/1987, he was the Principal Analyst of the Defense and Development in Africa Project at Elliot Berg Associates, Alexandria, VA.  He currently serves as a consultant to the UN Economic Commission for Africa as well as a member of the Technical Advisory Panel Networks of the African Capacity Building Foundation.  He serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of African Finance and Economic Development.  Kwabena’s research interests are varied but he concentrates on economics of crime and crime control, labor market discrimination, efficiency in the production of public goods, and economic development of Africa.  He has published about 50 articles in peer-reviewed economic journals, including, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Development Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Business and Economics Statistics, International Economics Journal, Information Economics and Policy, Journal of African Economies, and The Review of Black Political Economy.  He is a member of the American Economics Association, African Finance and Economics Association, and the National Economics Association since 1984.

RAPHAEL BOSTIC (UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA)

Dr. Bostic is an Associate Professor in USC’s School of Policy, Planning, and Development and Director of the SPPD’s Master of Real Estate Development degree program.  Dr. Bostic has done extensive research on housing markets and homeownership, including recent studies on barriers to homeownership, determinants of gentrification, and effects of anti-discrimination laws on minority homeownership achievement.  At USC, he teaches courses in affordable housing development, urban economics, and public finance.  He also is a contributing faculty member to activities of USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate and the Center for Economic Development.  He has previously served as the Director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast within the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate

Dr. Bostic has also written extensively on consumer banking issues, with a particular focus on mortgage and small business lending, bank branching patterns, and credit scoring and automated underwriting.  He is currently conducting research on the ways in which the Community Reinvestment Act has influenced the behavior of lenders and credit markets.  His broad research interests include financial markets and institutions, with a particular focus on banks in community development, the role and effects of regulation in banking, housing and homeownership, urban economic growth, wage and earnings profiles, and policy analysis generally.  His work has been published in a number of top journals, including the Journal of Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and the Journal of Banking and Finance.

Prior to joining SPPD, Dr. Bostic spent six years on the staff at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.  While at the Fed, he was responsible for studying and advising on fair lending and discrimination issues and received a Special Achievement Award in 2000 for his work supporting a Congressional mandate.  Dr. Bostic also served as a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Policy, Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.  He received his B.A. in psychology and economics from Harvard University in 1987 and his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford in 1995. 

KENYA COVINGTON (CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS FOUNDATION)

Dr. Kenya Covington has been at the forefront of policing policy and offering thoughtful policy alternatives to mitigate the challenges that many American families face. Most recently, as the Associate Director of Research at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. in Washington, D.C. for the Center for Policy Analysis and Research, she focuses on issues related to family policy, social and urban policy, as well as education.  In addition to performing original research in the aforementioned areas she collaborates with external senior research scientists in an effort to bring applied academic research to bear on policymaking on Capitol Hill.  Also, with responsibility to oversee the monthly research newsletter Policy Perspectives that has more than 15,000 subscribers, Dr. Covington along with her colleagues, utilize the outlet to interject crucial often unexplored perspectives to the policy debate.      

Prior to this position she was a Resident Scholar at the National Urban League.  Her primary responsibilities involved the supervision of numerous research projects concerning social and urban policy. Most noteworthy she coauthored two papers on the effects of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, one on the negative effects of TANF on the college enrollment of welfare recipients and the other on the differences in TANF support service utilization by current and former welfare recipients.

Dr. Covington is the recipient of numerous awards.  While earning her BA in Sociology at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, Dr. Covington achieved Who's Who Among Colleges and Universities in 1991, 1992 Homecoming Queen, Alpha Kappa Delta-National Sociology Honor Society and Epsilon Epsilon Omega-Exceptional Education Opportunities Honor Society and at the graduate level she received a University of Maryland Minority Fellowship and numerous graduate research appointments.     

Dr. Covington holds master degrees in sociology/criminology, urban planning, and a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Maryland. Her dissertation research focused on child care accessibility and investigated the effect of inefficient local child care markets on the labor force participation of mothers with young children.  In addition, Covington has given numerous presentations across the U.S. to both academic and practitioner audiences on urban and social policy issues important to African Americans and other underrepresented communities.     

FIDEL EZEALA-HARRISON (JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY) 

Fidel Ezeala-Harrison is Professor of Economics at Jackson State University, Jackson, MS; and formerly Professor of Economics at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. He obtained his PhD (1987) and M.A. (1983) from the University of Manitoba, Canada, and York University, Toronto, Canada, respectively; and received his undergraduate training from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana (1977). His research interests lie in applied micro analyses in areas of poverty, labor markets, and economic development. His publications appear in Journal of Developing Areas, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Applied Economics, Canadian Journal of Regional Science, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Journal of Economic Development, and Southwestern Economic Review, among others. Dr. Ezeala-Harrison is the author of Theory and Policy of International Competitiveness (Praeger, 1999), Economic Development: Theory and Policy Applications (Praeger, 1996), and co-editor of Perspectives on Economic Development in Africa (Praeger, 1994). During 2000, he was Visiting Professor, International Competitiveness Workshop, at Fujian University, China; and during 1997, he was Visiting Research Associate on International Economic Growth and Development, at the University of Newcastle, Australia; and Visiting Professor at the Indonesian Institute of Management Studies, Jakarta, Indonesia. Dr. Ezeala-Harrison lives in Ridgeland, MS, with wife Chichi and 3 children.

LANCE FREEMAN (COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY)

Lance Freeman is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Planning program at Columbia University in New York City where he teaches courses on housing policy and research methods.   He has also taught in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware.  Prior to this, Dr. Freeman worked as a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, a leading social policy research firm in Washington D.C.  Dr. Freeman holds a Masters degree and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Dr. Freeman has published several articles in refereed journals on issues related to neighborhood change, urban poverty, housing policy, urban sprawl and residential segregation.  Dr. Freeman also obtained extensive experience working with community development groups while working as a Community Development coordinator for the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development and as a Research Associate at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Dr. Freeman also has professional experience working as a City Planner for the New York City Housing Authority, and as a budget analyst for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

SUSAN T. GOODEN (VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY)

Susan Tinsley Gooden is an Associate Professor in the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.  She conducts research in the area of welfare policy with an emphasis on race and welfare; private and non-profit service delivery; and rural welfare policy.  Also, she is a consultant to the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), a non-profit, employment and training research firm based in New York, New York.  She is the author of several publications in the area of welfare policy.  Her research has appeared in the Public Administration Review, Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, Journal of Poverty, Journal of Public Affairs Education, and as MDRC publications. 

MAURY D. GRANGER (JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY)

Maury D. Granger  is an Associate Professor of Economics  in the  College of Business at Jackson State University.  Dr. Granger’s  research is in the area of urban and labor economics, and he is currently examining the impact of race on the overall quality of life as a Research Fellow at the Mississippi Urban Research Center. His  research has appeared in the Review of Black Political Economy,  Southern Economic Journal,  and Urban Studies.