Jeffrey Vincent

Jeffrey M. Vincent, PhD is a director and cofounder of the Center for Cities & Schools (CC&S) at the University of California, Berkeley. Jeff has a PhD in City and Regional Planning from Berkeley. His policy and research interests lie at the intersection of land use planning, community development, and educational improvement, with a particular focus on how school facilities serve as educational and neighborhood assets. Jeff has researched and written extensively on a variety of issues, including school infrastructure planning, school siting and design, sustainable communities, community development, educational economics, housing policy, state school construction policies, joint use of schools, youth engagement in redevelopment, refugee resettlement, and transportation policy. His research and policy writing has been published in peer-reviewed and practitioner-oriented journals, books, and other outlets. 

Jeff is an applied and policy-focused academic looking for solutions to some of our societies most vexing problems around social inequities. His work embodies two key innovations in thinking and acting. First, finding policy answers requires new modes of scholarship that draw on a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods. Second, it requires collaborative work between the too-often-siloed public, nonprofit, and private sectors. Much of Jeff’s work involves “engaged scholarship,” done for and in partnership with public agencies, nonprofit organizations and others with public interests in mind. His research is used to inform collaborative policy at multiple levels of government that is principle-driven and provides transparency, fairness, and accountability.

Jeff is an instructor and graduate student mentor in our PLUS Fellows program.

In 2016, Jeff won the Berkeley Chancellor’s Award for Public Service, Research in the Public Interest