GC Announces Inaugural Recipient of Marilyn Jacobs Gittell Endowed Chair

The Graduate Center today announced the appointment of Celina K. Su, associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College, as the inaugural Marilyn Jacobs Gittell Chair. The professorship, funded by a $2.3 million gift from SAGE Publications and its founder and executive chairman Sara Miller McCune, enhances the GC's stature as an interdisciplinary hub for urban and community research.

An expert in critical participatory action research and community studies, Su focuses on participatory governance, civil society, civic engagement, and the cultural politics of education and health policy. She holds a doctoral degree in urban studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The professorship's namesake, a scholar-activist fiercely committed to racial, gender, and educational justice, taught political science at the Graduate Center from 1978 until her death in 2010. Her research and activism were instrumental in the decentralization of New York City's public school system, among other achievements.

With the endowed chair, the Graduate Center affirms its commitment to community-based, policy-oriented research, emphasizing education, social justice, and other pressing urban issues. The objective is to improve understanding of complex and evolving challenges in cities, as well as advance responsive, creative, and effective public policy and practice.
 
The professorship's origins are personal: while teaching at Queens College in the 1960s, Gittell (left) became a mentor to McCune, then a student. McCune went on to found SAGE, now the world's leading independent academic and professional publisher. Gittell served as editor of SAGE's first journal, Urban Affairs Quarterly (now Urban Affairs Review), and was insistent on developing interdisciplinary work at the 'cutting edge' of urban research and scholarship, according to McCune.

"Marilyn was a tremendously talented political scientist," said McCune, who serves on the advisory board of the Graduate Center's Howard Samuels Center, which Gittell led from its founding in 1988. "She was also passionate about what happened in the real world, down on the streets and in the schools-in particular, schools in cities. Not just in New York City, but in cities across the United States."

In addition to her leadership at SAGE, McCune (right) is president of the McCune Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports the growth of social capital in communities. She said that by preserving Gittell's legacy, the Graduate Center will help further a necessary understanding of cities.

"It seemed to me that a premier public research institution in a world-class city, and Marilyn's academic home at that, was the natural place to locate the Marilyn Jacobs Gittell Chair Endowment," McCune said. "It can be an intellectual hub for urban scholarship and community outreach in North America, and a beacon showing what can be done with regard to the world's greatest cities-what needs to be done, and what must be done."
 
Watch a video interview with Sara Miller McCune.
Visit the Marilyn Jacobs Gittell Digital Archive.