Dear UT Community,
I am excited to announce that JR DeShazo will serve as the next dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, effective September 10, 2021. Until then, he will serve as dean-designate.
Dean-designate DeShazo comes to UT Austin from the University of California, Los Angeles. At UCLA, he is a professor of public policy and holds joint appointments in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Department of Urban Planning, and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
He has served in a variety of leadership roles, including service as chair and vice-chair of the UCLA Department of Public Policy. He also served as the founding director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, one of the nation’s leading environmental policy research centers.
Dean-designate DeShazo is a distinguished scholar whose work focuses on clean technology policies, policy design to enhance environmental equity, methods for valuing changes in environmental quality, and the performance of public agencies.
Through his research and appointments, he served as a policy advisor to international organizations such the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations. He has also advised federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Dean-designate DeShazo earned a doctorate in urban planning from Harvard University; a master’s degree in development economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar; and a bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary.
I would like to thank the search committee and acknowledge their extensive efforts. I would also like to thank David Springer who stepped in to lead the school during an unprecedented period for the university and our communities.
Please join me in welcoming Dean-designate DeShazo to the UT community.
Sincerely,
Dan Jaffe
Interim Executive Vice President and Provost