Bert A. Rockman, Ph.D. (A&S ‘65) was honored by the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Political Science with a Distinguished Professional Achievement Award on Friday, April 22, 2016.
With a distinguished career spanning four decades, Professor Rockman is one of the most influential scholars of the American Presidency and American political institutions. He has authored or co-authored over two dozen books, including Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (Harvard University Press, 1981), In the Web of Politics: Three Decades of the U.S. Federal Executive (Brookings University Press, 2000), and The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (Oxford University Press, 2006). He has published over one hundred articles in prestigious journals such as the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Politics.
Professor Rockman earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the Dietrich School in 1965, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from the University of Michigan in 1967 and 1974, respectively. Upon graduation, he taught at the University of Michigan before returning to the University of Pittsburgh in 1976 as an associate professor of political science. During his fifteen-year tenure at the University of Pittsburgh, he redesigned the American Politics concentration in the Department of Political Science and founded the Center for the Study of American Politics and Society (CAPS). He went on to become Professor and Director of the School of Public Policy and Management at Ohio State University in 2001, and Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at Purdue University from 2005-2012.
In 2015, Professor Rockman was recognized as the author of one of the 75 most significant articles published in Public Administration Review in its 75-year history. He was elected to the National Academy of Public Administration in 2009. He received the 2006 Herbert A. Simon Award for lifetime scientific contributions to the study of public administration, the 1985 Richard E. Neustadt Award for best book on the U.S. Presidency, and the 1980 Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the best paper presented at the 1979 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.
In 2013, Professor Rockman generously established the Dr. Bert A. Rockman Endowed Fund in Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh Dietrich School. The Fund supports the Dr. Bert A. Rockman Lecture in American Politics. The inaugural Lecture was given by Professor Rockman in 2014.