Michael Preston Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives

Michael Preston was named vice provost for strategic initiatives effective July 1, 2008, having served as special adviser to the provost since 2005. Preston is also a professor of political science in the USC College, where he specializes in American politics, urban politics, black politics, and racial and ethnic politics.

Preston joined the USC faculty in 1986, having spent 13 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He served as chair of the Department of Political Science from 1989 to 1995, and as director of the Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies from 1995 to 1998. During his tenure at USC, he has received outstanding teaching awards from Mortar Board and the department of black students.

Additionally, Preston has been honored with a 2004 Frank J. Goodnow Award for significant contributions to the political science profession and the American Political Science Association (APSA), and with a 2003 Career Achievement Award from the APSA’s Urban Politics Section. He is a past president of the Western Political Science Association and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, and also has served as vice-president of the APSA.

Preston is the author of Racial and Ethnic Politics in California (1991, second edition 1998), The New Black Politics (1981, second edition 1987) and The Politics of Bureaucratic Reform: The Case of the California State Employment Service (1984), and co-editor of Race, Sex and Policy Problems (1979). He is a former associate editor of the National Political Science Review and Urban Affairs Quarterly, and has served as a reviewer for numerous other professional journals as well as the National Science Foundation.

He holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.