William Dabars

Senior Research Fellow for University Design and Research Professor, Office of University Affairs

Senior Research Fellow for University Design and Research Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society

Senior Global Futures Scholar, Global Futures Scientists and Scholars

Office of the President Fulton Center 410 PO Box 877705 Tempe, AZ 85287-7705
Mail code: 7705

Campus: Tempe
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Long Bio

William Dabars is senior research fellow for University Design and senior director of research for the New American University in the Office of the President, Arizona State University. He is a research professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and a Senior Global Futures Scholar in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. He is also a fellow of the Institute for the Future of Innovation in Society and an affiliate scholar in the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO). He is the coauthor, with Michael M. Crow, of The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) and Designing the New American University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). The latter book has been translated into five languages.

He previously served in various research and editorial capacities for the University of Southern California, University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Getty Research Institute, one of the operating programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and as a consultant for the Getty Conservation Institute and University of Colorado, Boulder.

He received a PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Although his primary field at UCLA was European intellectual history, his subsequent research and publications focus on the emergence and evolution of the American research university. Associated research areas include disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, knowledge production, organizational sociology, and responsible innovation.

Education

Ph.D. History, University of California, Los Angeles 2008
B.A. History of Art, University of Colorado, Boulder

Images

Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars, Designing the New American University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015)

Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars, The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education (Baltimore: JHUP, 2020)

Publications

BOOKS

Crow, Michael M., William B. Dabars, and Derrick Anderson. National Service Universities: Democratizing American Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2024.
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. Translations into Chinese (2022), Spanish (forthcoming 2023), and Vietnamese (forthcoming 2023).
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. Designing the New American University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Translations into Chinese (forthcoming 2023), Korean (2017), Russian (2017), and Vietnamese (2022).

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars, "Academic Culture, Democracy, and Climate Change." In Democracy in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and Democratic Transformation. Edited by David W. Orr. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023.
Dabars, William B., and Kevin T. Dwyer. "Toward Institutionalization of Responsible Innovation in the Contemporary Research University: Insights from Case Studies of Arizona State University." Journal of Responsible Innovation 9, no. 1 (2022): 114–123.
Dabars, William B. "Reconceptualizing the Public Research University." Issues in Science and Technology 38, no. 2 (Winter 2022): 93–95.
Crow, Michael M., William B. Dabars, and Derrick M. Anderson. “Building a Research University Where All People Matter.” In Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People. Edited by David W. Orr, Andrew Gumbel, Bakari Kitwana, and William Becker. New York: New Press, 2020.
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Restructuring Research Universities to Advance Transdisciplinary Collaboration.” In Strategies for Team Science Success: Handbook of Evidence-Based Principles for Cross-Disciplinary Science and Practical Lessons Learned from Health Researchers. Edited by Kara L. Hall, Amanda L. Vogel, and Robert T. Croyle, 477–488. New York: Springer, 2019.
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. "Interdisciplinarity and the Institutional Context of Knowledge in the American Research University." In The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, 2nd ed. Edited by Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, and Roberto Carlos Dos Santos Pacheco, 471–484. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. "A New Model for the American Research University." Issues in Science and Technology 31, no. 2 (Spring 2015).
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Toward Interdisciplinarity by Design in the American Research University.” In University Experiments in Interdisciplinarity: Obstacles and Experiments. Edited by Peter Weingart and Britta Padberg, 13–36. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014.
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Interdisciplinarity as a Design Problem: Toward Mutual Intelligibility Among Academic Disciplines in the American Research University.” In Enhancing Communication and Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Research. Edited by Michael O’Rourke, Stephen Crowley, Sanford D. Eigenbrode, and J. D. Wulfhorst, 294–322. Los Angeles: Sage, 2013.
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “University-Based R&D and Economic Development: The Morrill Act and the Emergence of the American Research University.” In Precipice or Crossroads: Where America’s Great Public Universities Stand and Where They Are Going Midway Through Their Second Century. Edited by Daniel Mark Fogel and Elizabeth Malson-Huddle, 119–158. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.
Crow, Michael M., and William B. Dabars. “Knowledge Without Borders: American Research Universities in a Global Context.” Cairo Review of Global Affairs 5 (Spring 2012): 34–45.