On November 12th at the Van Brunt Visitors Center, the PPC and UNL celebrated the receipt of UNL's first Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program grant from the National Science Foundation. This five-year, $3.1 million grant will fund a new, multidisciplinary graduate program focused on resilience and adaptive governance in stressed watersheds. This collaborative program will integrate scientific, social, economic and legal aspects of managing complex water issues.
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News and Events
Name: Alan Tomkins
E-Mail: atomkins@nebraska.edu
Phone: (402) 472-5688
Alan Tomkins is the director of the Public Policy Center (appointed as its inaugural director in July 1998) and professor of psychology and law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Education
J.D., Ph.D., Washington University, Law & Social Psychology, 1984
B.A., Boston University, Psychology and Philosophy, 1975
B.A., Boston University, Psychology and Philosophy, 1975
Areas of Interest
Dr. Tomkins' primary research interests focus on public participation and its implications for democracy in policymaking, public trust and confidence in government (especially the courts), the interplay between policies and behaviors, behavioral health systems of care and related practices and policies, program evaluation, and examining issues of justice, fairness and the impact of scientific information in the water resources context.
Projects
- A Community Conversation: Future of Lincoln
- Agricultural Property Taxation Comparison Analysis
- Budgeting Outcomes and Priorities in Lincoln
- Carbon Sequestration Project
- Citizen Input for Budgeting and Performance Management in Lincoln
- Community Services Initiative (CSI)
- Genetically Modified Foods
- HIV-AIDS: Issues in Treatment, Stigma, and Policy Symposium
- Hometown Competitiveness
- Human Genome Public Policy Seminar
- Knowledge Discovery and Information Fusion Tools for Collaborative Systems to Adaptively Manage Uncertain Hydrological Resources
- Lancaster County Indigency Screener Project
- Model Nebraska Juvenile Code Project
- NEBHANDS Project
- Nebraska Child Support Collection and Disbursement System Implementation
- Nebraska Rural Poll
- Paying for the Good Life
- Public Trust and Confidence in the Courts
- Reducing Courts’ Failure-to-Appear Rate: A Procedural Justice Approach
- Special Education Flexible Funding Project
- State Meat Inspection Program
- Water and Community Development Project
- Water Policy Discussion
Publications
- Agricultural Property Taxation: A Comparative Analysis
- Are court-appointed experts the solution to the problems of expert testimony?
- Center for Applied Rural Innovation: A Research Report—Well-Being in Rural Nebraska
- Civil Juries and Civil Justice - Constructs of Justice: Beyond Civil Litigation
- Clinical decision-making about psychopathy and violence risk assessment in public sector mental health settings
- Clinical practice and violence risk assessment: Availability of MacArthur risk factors
- Community Conversation: Future of Lincoln, A
- Community life and housing in rural Nebraska. 2005 Nebraska Rural Poll Results. CARI Research Report 05-2
- Community Services Implementation Project Year Three Progress Report
- Consumer Opinions on Genetically Modified Food: A Community Discussion
- Creating caring communities: The need for structural change
- Documentation of violence risk factors in psychiatric facilities: An empirical examination
- Enhancing Rural Sustainability Project Status Report
- Evaluating Court Processes for Determining Indigency
- Gender and perceptions of dangerousness in civil psychiatric patients
- Government regulation: State regulation of psychology
- Guiding Principles on Human Genetic Technologies
- How the Public Views the State Courts: A 1999 National Survey
- Immigration Controversies in Nebraska: Policies, Politics, and Public Perspectives
- Indigency Screener Project Final Report
- Integrating conditional release and contingency management for individuals with chronic mental illness
- International perspectives on restorative and community justice [Special issue]
- International perspectives on Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Part II [Special issue]
- Judgments of dangerousness: Are sex offenders assessed differently than civil psychiatric patients?
- Making a living in Rural Nebraska. 2006 Nebraska Rural Poll Results. CARI Research Report 06-1
- Nebraska Child Support Collection and Disbursement System Implementation Project Final Report
- Newcomers in Nebraska's rural communities. 2006 Nebraska Rural Poll Results. CARI Research Report 06-2
- Perceived relevance of factors for violence risk assessment: A survey of clinicians
- Perceptions of Latin American immigration among rural Nebraskans. CARI Research Report 06-4
- Potential Impacts of State Meat and Poultry Inspection for the State of Nebraska
- Preliminary Evaluation of the Lancaster County Indigency Screener Project
- Priority Lincoln: Background
- Priority Lincoln: Brief Report Final
- Priority Lincoln: Budgeting for Outcomes Final Report
- Public trust and confidence in the courts [Special issue]
- Public Trust and Confidence in the Courts: What Public Opinion Surveys Mean to Judges
- Research and engagement opportunities for applying science to public policy: The University of Nebraska Public Policy Center
- Rural Nebraska: Looking back at a decade of change and progress. 2005 Nebraska Rural Poll Results. CARI Research Report 05-1
- Rural Nebraskans' support for alternative energy sources. 2005 Nebraska Rural Poll Results. CARI Research Report 05-3
- Some initial ideas about implementation of a child-centered, neighborhood-based child protection system
- Understanding Farmers' Forecast Use from Their Beliefs, Values, Social Norms, and Perceived Obstacles
- Understanding the Influence of Climate Forecasts on Farmer Decisions as Planned Behavior
- United Way and University Partnerships in Community-Wide Human Services Planning and Plan Implementation
- Views of life in Nebraska's rural communities. 2006 Nebraska Rural Poll Results. CARI Research Report 06-3
- Well-Being in Nebraska. 2005 Nebraska Rural Poll Results. CARI Research Report 05-4
- Your Water: A Citizen Deliberation
Professional Activities
- Director, University of Nebraska Public Policy Center (1998 - present)
- Assistant (8/86), to Associate (with tenure, 8/93), to Professor (8/99), Law and Psychology Program, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1986 - present)
- William J. Clinton Distinguished Fellow, University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service (2005 - 2006)
- Visiting Scholar, Faculty of Law, University of Southampton, England (1997)
- Visiting Scholar, Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea (1997)
- Research Associate, Federal Judicial Center, Washington, DC (1985 - 1986)
- Visiting Assistant Prof., Dept. Psychology, Univ. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984 - 1985)
- Research Assistant Professor, Dept. of Psychology, St. Louis University (1981 - 1985)
- Co-Editor and then Editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Behavioral Sciences & the Law (1989-2001)
- Fellow of the American-Psychology Law Society (Division 41 of the American Psychological Association)
- Fellow of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (Division 9 of the American Psychological Association)
- Co-Editor of Court Review: The Journal of the American Judges Association, working with editor Judge Steve Leben of the Kansas Court of Appeals. He is the first non-judge to serve as an editor of Court Review
