Stephen M Gavazzi

Stephen M. Gavazzi, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Human Sciences in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University, as well as the director of CHRR at The Ohio State University. With West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee as a co-author, his newest book "What's Public About Public Higher Ed?" was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2021. Gavazzi and Gee also are co-authors on "Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good," which was published in 2018 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dr. Gavazzi is a trained marriage and family therapist whose scholarship for the past thirty five years has surrounded the impact that family dynamics have on adolescent development and behavior. He has written a book for parents entitled "Strong Families, Successful Students" that was published in 2010, and a textbook entitled "Families with Adolescents: Bridging the Gaps Between Theory, Research, and Practice" that was published in 2011 by Springer Press (with the second edition published in 2023).

Professor Gavazzi's current scholarship centers on higher education leadership. He also has written about the establishment and maintenance of healthy campus-community relationships. His work on town-gown issues makes ample use of his marriage and family therapy background, and has given rise to the development of a typology described in his 2016 book -- The Optimal Town-Gown Marriage -- that draws parallels between campus-community relationships and marriages.