Keith Melville, Ph.D.
Doctoral Faculty - School of Leadership Studies | Fielding Graduate University
Santa Barbara, CA, UNITED STATES
Public issues and civic education; public opinion; applied social research; social psychology
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Biography
A Ph.D. sociologist who graduated from Columbia University, Keith Melville has been a faculty member at the Fielding Graduate University since 1983. He has also worked in the nonprofit and public policy world in senior editorial and administrative roles and as a consultant to several foundations and government agencies. Throughout his career, his main interests have been in the areas of public policy, higher education, and the uses of social science research. In recent years, he has written about the progressive tradition in higher education, education for civic literacy and democratic life, and competency development in higher education. In the 1970s, he worked in the White House, where he was a writer and staff member for the President’s Commission for a National Agenda for the 1980s. Subsequently, he worked at the Public Agenda Foundation in New York, founded by former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and pollster Daniel Yankelovich, where he was senior vice president. Since leaving Public Agenda, he has worked with the Kettering Foundation, where he is a senior associate. As a writer and general editor, Keith Melville has a long list of publications, including trade books, college-level text books, journal articles, and book chapters. He was a contributing writer for the New York Academy of Science’s magazine, The Sciences. His first trade book, Communes in the Counter Culture, was a featured selection of the Book of the Month Club. He is the author of a college-level textbook, Marriage and Family Today, which in the course of four editions was a leading text in that field. For fourteen years, he was executive editor of the National Issues Forums. In that position, he was senior writer of a series of magazine-length publications on major public issues. He has also written several dozen reports for foundations, including a report on the high school dropout problem for the Pew Charitable Trusts, The School Dropout Crisis; a chapter in The Deliberative Democracy Handbook (Jossey-Bass, 2006), and several dozen other articles and book chapters.
Industry Expertise (2)
Research
Education/Learning
Areas of Expertise (4)
Public Opinion
Applied Social Research
Public Issues and Civic Education
Scholarly Competencies
Education (1)
Columbia University: PhD, Public Policy 1983
Affiliations (4)
- Kettering Foundation : Associate
- Public Agenda Online : Creator and Executive Editor
- Public Agenda Foundation : Former Senior Vice President
- National Issues Forum : Former Executive Editor
Articles (4)
BOOK: A Passion for Adult Learning / How the Fielding model is transforming doctoral education
(2016) CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
This well written and insightful case study of the evolution of Fielding Graduate University takes us on a journey into the thinking and values of the Institute's visionary founders, and the challenges they and the others who joined their dream faced...As one of the academic leaders who helped to create another innovative doctoral program with similar educational and social values, I can attest that Fielding's model was very important in our planning at the turn of the 21st century. While the Fielding program is relatively small, it has had a large impact on graduate education." Alan E. Guskin, Distinguished University Professor, PhD Program in Leadership and Change and University President Emeritus, Antioch University
BOOK: Contested values: Tug-of-war in the school yard
(1994) National issues forums
Kendall/Hunt Pub. Co; Regular ed edition (1994)
BOOK: Communes in the Counter Culture: Origins, Theories, Styles of Life
(1972) National issues forums
Publisher: William Morrow
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