Abstract
Thank you.
I’m deeply honored to be chosen for the Jay Chatterjee Award. It is especially meaningful to be receiving the Chatterjee Award here in Cincinnati, with Jay seated on the platform. It was the vision and genius of Jay and that pioneering group back in the early 1980s that started ACSP on the path to the strong and vibrant Association we have today. Thank you, Jay!
It’s very humbling to be chosen for this award. Let me explain. ACSP has been my intellectual and professional home for more than thirty years. I’ve always found it a supportive place to test ideas and make connections. The longer I’m involved, the more deeply I realize how special ACSP is. It is one of the few academic associations—maybe the only one—that so vigorously supports both the scholarly development of the field and its institutional apparatus. Our conference and our journal are highly respected globally for their roles in advancing planning scholarship. No less important, our association provides forums for addressing the full range of institutional and professional concerns facing the planning academy—equity with respect to race, gender, and sexual orientation; mentoring of junior faculty and graduate students; the implications of globalization—to mention some examples that I’ve tried to work on.
What is humbling—as all of us who have had the privilege of holding leadership positions know very well—is that the success of ACSP depends on the active involvement of all of you—the member programs and their faculty and students. The real work of our association is done in committees, task forces, and interest groups. I think of a comment from Wim Wiewel shortly after he assumed the position of ACSP president. It was something like, “the most important job of the president is to appoint the people to serve on all the committees and task forces.” That might have been an exaggeration, but not by much.
So whatever part I’ve played in advancing ACSP, I couldn’t have done it without the support and participation of literally dozens and dozens of active colleagues—people who served on the Governing Board and JPER Editorial Board, built GPEIG and POCIG, reviewed JPER manuscript submissions, served as conference track chairs, and on and on. It would make for a long afternoon if I tried to thank everyone by name. You know who you are. I hope you know how grateful I am. You are the strength of our association.
But I do want to make two personal acknowledgments. First, I’m blessed to have a wife and partner whose unconditional support keeps me going. Even though Judy can’t be here today because she’s keynoting a conference in her own field of health services research, I’m strongly aware of her presence.
Second, I’ve had the good fortune to spend my career at the University of Oregon. The central administration, successive deans, and most of all my friends and colleagues in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management have provided strong moral and material support for my involvement with ACSP. Go Ducks!
Thank you very much.