Dr. Frank Fear
Dr. Frank A. Fear joined the board of directors of the National Issues Forums Institute, which promotes public deliberation in the United States. Fear joined the board at the Institute's biannual meeting in Washington, DC, in March 2008. NIFI's directors are volunteers drawn from leaders in government, colleges and universities, civic organizations, libraries, the media, and medicine.
Fear has served Michigan State University for more than 30 years. He is currently professor and senior associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Fear established his academic credentials in the fields of community and organization development and has served as a two-term department chairperson, as acting associate director of MSU Extension, and as inaugural director and two-term administrator of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Scholars Program. From 2000-2005, Fear devoted his attention full-time to scholarly expressions with emphasis on collaborative learning and university-community engagement. During that time he wrote or co-authored more than 25 articles and book chapters, culminating in the publication of a book, Coming to Critical Engagement. Contributing enormously to this scholarly productivity was time spent as a scholar-writer with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. For these and other scholarly contributions, in 2006, Fear was named senior fellow in outreach and engagement at MSU.
Active also in civic affairs, he has served as two-term president and chair of the board of directors, Greater Lansing Food Bank. Fear currently codirects a project sponsored by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation on public deliberation on contested issues in Michigan agriculture and natural resources.
The National Issues Forums Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, promotes the use of public deliberation in schools, colleges, civic organizations, and religious institutions. It serves as a partner with public affairs television stations and other organizations that want to reach a wider audience. In addition, the Institute produces issue books used by the National Issues Forums network to stimulate public deliberation on major issues facing Americans.
The National Issues Forums' work produces more than just talk. Results of public deliberations are shared locally by forum sponsors and institutes and nationally with members of the U.S. Congress, the executive branch, and the media.
This year, results of one forum series were compiled in a report, Public Thinking about the Energy Problem: Choices for an Uncertain Future, which is available at www.nifi.org. People from 42 states and the District of Columbia participated in forums examining this topic. This year, the National Issues Forums Institute will promote deliberation on several key national issues including "Coping With The Cost of Health Care: How Do We Pay For What We Need?"
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