Professor Alice Rivlin Wins Rossi Award

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy have announced McCourt School Visiting Professor Alice Rivlin, Ph.D., as among the three recipients of this year’s Peter H. Rossi Award for pioneering the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and for her unwavering commitment throughout her career to effective public policy.

“We are delighted to make this award to three outstanding individuals who, collectively, established the standards under which the Congressional Budget Office still operates and, in doing so, created a firm foundation of independence and evidence-based objectivity,” said Douglas J. Besharov, chair of the award selection committee. “Individually, as well, they have made numerous powerful and sustained contributions to program evaluation, policy-analysis, and policy-making.”

The other Rossi Award recipients include Urban Institute Fellows Rudolph Penner, Ph.D., and Robert Reischauer, Ph.D.

The Rossi Award honors the lifetime achievements of Peter Rossi (1921–2006) by recognizing important contributions to the theory or practice of program evaluation. The Rossi Award is presented for a recent paper, publication, or for an entire body of work that is recognized as an important contribution to the theory or practice of program evaluation. The selection committee is chaired by Douglas J. Besharov, University of Maryland, and includes two former presidents of APPAM and two past Rossi awardees, serving for staggered, three-year terms.

Professor Rivlin is currently a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a visiting professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy . She was Director of the Office Management and Budget (OMB) in the first Clinton Administration (1993-96) and served as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board (1996-1999). She was the Founding Director of the Congressional Budget Office (1975-83) and served as chair of the District of Columbia Financial Management and Assistance Authority (1998-2001). She was director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings (1983-87). She also served at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (1968-69). In 2010, Rivlin was named by President Obama to the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and also co-chaired, with former Senator Pete Domenici, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Debt Reduction. She has also taught at Harvard and George Mason Universities, as well as The New School. She received a B.A. in economics from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. from Radcliffe College (Harvard University) in economics.

For additional information about the Rossi Award, please visit welfareacademy.org/rossi . For additional information about the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management please visit http://www.appam.org/