Steven Cohen
Professor in the Practice of Public Affairs, SIPA; Director, Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management, The Earth Institute; Director, MPA in Environmental Science and Policy
Personal Details
Focus areas: Public management innovation, public ethics, sustainability management, politics, environmental management
Dr. Steven Cohen is the Senior Vice Dean of Columbia’s School of Professional Studies and a Professor in the Practice of Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is also Director of the Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, Director of the Master of Science in Sustainability Management at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, and the Director of the Earth Institute’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management at Columbia University.
He is a 1970 graduate of James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. Cohen received his B.A. in Political Science from Franklin College of Indiana (1974), and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the State University of New York in Buffalo (1977; 1979). In 1976-77, Cohen was a Ford Foundation Fellow in Urban Environmental Policy; in 1978-79, he was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Public and Environmental Policy and Implementation.
Dr. Cohen is the former Executive Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and now serves as a senior advisor for the Institute. He is a former policy analyst and consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Cohen has served on numerous boards and committees, including the Board of the Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs, the Executive Committee and Committee on Accreditation and Peer Review of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Homes for the Homeless, Board of Directors of the Willdan Group, Inc., Advisory Board of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, Steering Committee for the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Cohen also serves on the Judging Committee for the Yidan Prize Foundation and is the Chair of the Lotos Club’s Science and Technology Committee.
Dr. Cohen is the author of The Sustainable City (2017, 2020), Understanding Environmental Policy (2006, 2014), Sustainability Management (2011), The Effective Public Manager (1988, now co-authored in its fifth edition), and the co-author of Management Fundamentals (2020), Sustainability Policy: Hastening the Transition to a Cleaner Economy (2015), The Responsible Contact Manager (2008), Strategic Planning in Environmental Regulation (2005), Tools for Innovators: Creative Strategies for Managing Public Sector Organizations (1998), and Total Quality Management in Government (1993). He has written numerous articles on public management, sustainability management, and environmental policy. Dr. Cohen also writes a weekly blog for the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet website.
Education
- PhD, SUNY Buffalo
- MA, SUNY Buffalo
- BA, Franklin College of Indiana
Affiliations
- Board of Directors, Homes for the Homeless
- Executive Council, NASPAA
Honors and Awards
- Chair, Science and Technology Committee, The Lotos Club
- Advisory Board, Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota
- Judging Panel, Yidan Prize Foundation, Hong Kong, China
- Ford Foundation Fellow in Urban Environmental Policy
- Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Public and Environmental Policy and Implementation
Research And Publications
In The Media
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the School gathered multiple speakers and other online material to help celebrate 727 graduates representing 69 nations.
The managers of our organizations must pay attention to the physical dimensions of environmental sustainability, writes Steve Cohen.
Steve Cohen writes about how this pandemic will lead to increased public health capacity to track, prevent and treat disease in the future.
America's failure in handling this pandemic is reflective of four decades of disinvestment in public sector and an extreme focus on the market and individual wealth says Steve Cohen.
PPPs are the way of the future, writes Steven Cohen in his latest State of the Planet. A future with a renewable resource-based economy is dependent on public-private partnerships, he writes.