Faculty

Dr. Ruth Rosenbaum, TC, Ph.D., is an assistant professor who came to the University of Connecticut to develop and teach online courses for the Master of Professional Studies program in Humanitarian Services Administration (MPS/HSA). Her graduate level courses include Issues in Humanitarian Studies, Systemic Analysis, Poverty and Public Health, and Principles of Sustainability. She also teaches undergraduate courses in Corporate Responsibility, including Systemic Analysis, and Jobs, Work and Globalization.

A social economist, Dr. Rosenbaum is the executive director of CREA: Center for Reflection, Education and Action, Inc., a social-economic research and reporting organization which she co-founded in Hartford, Connecticut in 1996. She is the creator of the Purchasing Power Index, which she has used as a base for research in Haiti, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Kenya, and Connecticut.

Dr. Rosenbaum has been teaching since 1965, and began her teaching career at UConn as an MPS/HSA adjunct faculty in 2002. Her work at CREA makes her a perfect fit for the program. Her projects at CREA have involved globalization, sustainability, corporate responsibility, human rights, and workers and work place standards. Her human rights work focuses on economic issues, including work, income, and standard of living.

She has more than a decade of experience working with international NGOs to develop monitoring programs in manufacturing and assembly plants. She is a member of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) International Stakeholder Council and co-chair of the Apparel & Footwear Sector Working Group for the GRI.

Dr. Rosenbaum’s experiences working with NGOs in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in both an academic and hands-on capacity enable her to bring a wider scope of knowledge to her students. Her goal is to teach a curriculum that goes beyond book learning – one that includes real world experiences.

“I do a lot of international travel and meet the students where they are,” she says. “I teach from an ‘anchored in the real world’ point of view, where you see reality not from your own point of view, but from the view of workers in other countries.”

Dr. Rosenbaum earned a B.A. and M.A. in Molecular Biology at Hunter College of the University of New York, an M.A. in Religious Studies at Manhattan College, and a Doctorate in Social Economics and Social Justice at Boston College.

She is the author of In Whose Interest? Using the Purchasing Power Index to Analyze Plans, Programs and Policies of Industrialization and Development (2004), Making the Invisible Visible: A Study of the Purchasing Power of Maquila Workers in Mexico (2000); and El Salvador Sustain-Ability (2004).