CPAP honors Distinguished Professor John Rohr at reception in Alexandria

John Rohr, Distinguished Professor, Center for Public Administration and Policy (CPAP), was honored recently at Virginia Tech’s Alexandria campus on the occasion of his impending retirement from the university after 29 years of service. Recent Ph.D. graduates Gail Ledford, and Anne Simeone, current Ph.D.students James Meutzel, John O’Brien, and Beth Offenbacker, Visiting Professor Colleen Woodward, and Melony Price-Rhodes, project director, Institute for Public Policy and Governance, made special presentations for Professor Rohr before nearly 50 CPAP students, faculty, staff, and friends who gathered to recognize Rohr's significant contributions to the field of public administration as teacher, mentor, colleague, and scholar at the main campus in Blacksburg and in the National Capital Region. CPAP Ph.D. students from the National Defense University and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces also made a special presentation during the event, and Jim Wolf, professor, and Anne Khademian, associate program chair, CPAP, presented Rohr with a gift and certificate from CPAP Alexandria. 

Rohr, known internationally for his work focused on the Constitution and Public Administration, normative theory, and comparative public administration, joined Virginia Tech in 1979 as an associate professor. Rohr was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington from 1998 to 1999 and, in 2002, received the Dwight Waldo award for "outstanding contributions to the literature and leadership of public administration through an extended career."

Books he authored during his academic career include: Civil Servants and Their Constitutions, University Press of Kansas, 2002;  Public Service, Ethics and Constitutional Practice, University Press of Kansas, 1998; Founding Republics in France and America: A Study in Constitutional Governance, University Press of Kansas, 1995;  The President and the Public Administration, American Historical Association, 1989;  To Run A Constitution: The Legitimacy of the Administrative State, University Press of Kansas, 1986;  Ethics for Bureaucrats: An Essay on Law and Values, New York: Marcel Dekker, 1978, 2nd ed. 1989, and  Prophets Without Honor: Public Policy and the Selective Conscientious Objector, Abingdon Press, 1971.

Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Rohr served as professor, College of Business and Public Service, Governors State University; Fulbright Research Scholar, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris; associate director (NASPAA Fellow), General Management Training Center, Bureau of Training, U.S. Civil Service Commission; instructor and assistant professor, Department of Political Science, Loyola University; instructor, U.S. Naval Schools Command, and instructor, Department of Theology, Georgetown University.

Rohr was managing editor of the scholarly journal Administration and Society; and currently serves as associate editor of that journal. He has also served on the editorial boards of Public Administration Review, Administration and Policy Journal, and New Directions in Public Administration Research. At present, he is a member of the editorial boards of The American Review of Public Administration, Public Integrity, The Political Science Reviewer, and Policy and Public Administration Review.

Rohr received graduate degrees in philosophy and theology from Loyola and Georgetown Universities respectively, and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

Posted January 28, 2008