By Amy Lunday
Homewood

After nine years as director of the Institute for Policy Studies, Sandra J. Newman will step down from her post on June 30, 2009, she announced.

"Dr. Sandra Newman is an excellent scholar and has been a dedicated director of IPS," said Kristina Johnson, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. "We are fortunate she will remain on the IPS faculty and continue to direct the Center on Housing, Neighborhoods and Communities, one of the many initiatives she developed during her tenure as IPS director."

Newman's research focuses on the role of housing, neighborhood and community in the lives of families, children and disabled populations. She was selected as director of IPS in May 2000 after a national search, but her leadership of the institute actually began in July 1997, when she was named interim director. (Prior to that, Newman was IPS associate director for research.) During the 11 years that Newman led IPS, the graduate program in public policy doubled in size and is now the fourth- largest graduate program on the Homewood campus, she appointed an IPS National Advisory Board that is deeply committed to the future of IPS, and IPS either solely or in collaboration with colleagues across Johns Hopkins brought notable public policy scholars and professionals to campus for public lectures and symposia. Newman received the Johns Hopkins Women's Leadership Award in 2003.

"It has been an honor to lead IPS for more than a decade," Newman said. "I will leave the directorship with feelings of great pride and accomplishment for the contributions IPS has made over the past 12 years. I look forward to turning my full-time attention to my research and teaching and to working with the newly established MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Housing and Families with Children, where I am a member of the founding committee."

A renowned housing policy expert, Newman came to Johns Hopkins nearly 26 years ago from the University of Michigan, where she was a senior researcher at the Institute for Social Research and a tenured associate professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. In addition to her directorship and role as a professor of policy studies, Newman holds and will maintain joint appointments in the Department of Sociology in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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