Scholarship and Biography
During more than three decades at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Lawrence Bailis has taught courses for MPP and other students on citizen leadership and service as well as policy advocacy, protest and community organizing. He has also refined and co-taught the capstone course for MBA students and, a while ago, a seminar for undergraduates, both of which involve partnerships with the community, and, in the past, offered a PhD level course on welfare and poverty.
He has conducted three decades of sponsored research at the Center for Youth and Communities and several other Heller research centers for numerous federal, state, and local agencies, as well as nonprofit organizations and foundations. His research includes provision of evaluation-support for a non-profit foundation that is using federal and private funds to promote youth development, and evaluations of federally funded programs to promote replication of effective social programming for youth and to create school-community partnerships in the Bronx, several privately funded advocacy efforts to promote increase utilization of free meals for youth in the summer, a Gates foundation-funded efforts to promote access to higher education, and a corporate effort to promote financial literacy education.
He has also served as director of the Eli J Segal Citizen Leadership Program and now serves as a member of the Eli Segal Program Advisory Committee. He also serves as as the Brandeis representative on the Waltham Partnership for Youth, where he is the clerk of the board.
After completing g his service as Chair of the board of directors of the Massachusetts Service Alliance, he now serves as Chair of the Board of the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA), and clerk of the Waltham Partnership for Youth. He also serves or recently served on the boards of JOIN for Justice, a group that promotes training and technical assistance to social policy advocates, and the Silent Spring Institute which studies the causes of breast cancer.