Wie Yusuf

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Photo of Wie Yusuf Professor
Old Dominion University
2097 Constant Hall
School of Public Service
Norfolk, Virginia 23529
Email: jyusuf@odu.edu
Phone: 757-683-4437

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 Research Disciplines: Research Interests:

stakeholder engagement, co-production of knowledge, coastal adaptation, fiscal policy, whole-of-community and multi-sectoral approaches to resilience, community engagement and community participation

View Wie's CV

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Wie Yusuf is Professor of Public Service in the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University. She is a behavioral public policy researcher who adopts an interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral (government, business, nonprofit, civil society) perspective to studying coastal and urban resilience. For the last 9 years she has focused on the behavioral and human dimensions aspects of flooding, sea level rise, and coastal and urban resilience. Her work is largely engaged research, embedded in the local and regional context (Norfolk and Hampton Roads) and engaging directly with stakeholders in multiple sectors.

Her varied academic and professional background contributes to her multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary approach to studying coastal and urban resilience issues. She has an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering, an MBA, and a PhD in public administration. She was previously involved in launching a nonprofit technology incubator and was a policy researcher with the Kentucky Transportation Center.

The majority of Dr. Yusuf’s research is engaged research, embedded in the community context or addressing issues affecting the community. The Hampton Roads region, where ODU is located, offers a natural laboratory for the policy issues she studies, and her research has direct impact and implications for the region and beyond. For example, her research on stakeholder engagement in sea level rise resilience planning is directly embedded within the vulnerable Hampton Roads communities and directly benefits Hampton Roads residents and their resilience efforts.

Her research is also interdisciplinary. She created and now leads an interdisciplinary research team that studies resilience issues from a whole-of-community perspective. The team includes faculty and researchers from areas such as engineering technology, finance, modeling and simulation, geography, communication, oceanography, public health, and parks, recreation and tourism. She leads the ODU Resilience Collaborative, a university-wide, multidisciplinary consortium of ODU scholars actively engaged in research, education, and outreach on critical issues for resilience at the community, regional, national, and global levels. As assistant director of education for ODU’s Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience, she is actively engaged in developing educational programs in resilience across the university, spanning multiple disciplines, academic departments, and colleges.

Dr Yusuf studies policy issues largely through a behavioral lens, applying a behavioral public policy perspective. In studying how drivers respond to nuisance flooding on roads, for example, her research focuses on first understanding drivers’ perceptions of the risk, and then, their behavioral responses to encountering flooded roads under different scenarios. Her subsequent work has focused on the information logistics of how residents receive information about flooding, and in turn, how they would interact with and use flood alert systems.

Education

  • Ph.D., Public Administration, December 2007, University of Kentucky
  • MBA, May 2002, Indiana University Fort Wayne
  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, May 1999, University of Notre Dame

 

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