Ginsberg Center appoints new faculty director

A U-M professor whose community service projects include working with students in Detroit to help revitalize the retail industry and strengthen housing in the city has been appointed faculty director of the Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning.

(Photo by Ken Arbogast-Wilson)

Margaret E. Dewar, the Emil Lorch Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning in the Taubman College, has 25 years of instructional, research and advisory experience in the academic community. In 1994 she founded the Detroit Community Partnership Center to help integrate projects that address community-identified needs into teaching and research.

Center projects have won many state and national awards, and have had a role in several development initiatives in Detroit's neighborhoods. Among the projects Dewar has been involved with in the city are: creating a city land bank to handle disposition of tax-reverted property; reinforcing environments for housing with Habitat for Humanity; revitalizing retail throughout the city; redeveloping southwest Detroit; strengthening housing in eastside neighborhoods; and reusing contaminated sites.

Dewar has served in several faculty roles, including chair of the Urban and Regional Planning Program, where she also was director of the doctoral program. Under her leadership, the department attracted new faculty, increased the number of students, created two new joint degrees with law and business and a new graduate certificate in real estate development, and reinforced research support through the new Urban and Regional Research Collaborative.

Her appointment is effective Aug. 1.

In her research, Dewar investigates the capacity of governmental institutions and planning to improve the economic situation of troubled industries, depressed regions and high-poverty urban areas. She has written books and articles about industrial policy, regional economic development programs and urban revitalization initiatives.

Before coming to U-M in 1988, Dewar was a faculty member at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota; National Research Council Fellow, Manufacturing Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences; postdoctoral fellow at Joint Center for Urban Studies of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and instructor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.

She received a bachelor of arts degree from Wellesley College, master's degree in community planning from Harvard University, and doctorate from MIT.