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. With West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee as a co-author, his newest book "Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good" is being published in 2018 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dr. Gavazzi is a trained marriage and family therapist whose scholarship for the past thirty 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.

Professor Gavazzi's most recent scholarship centers on 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.