Dr. Joseph Youngblood, II, is the Vice Provost and Dean of the John S. Watson School of Public Service and Continuing Studies at Thomas Edison State College (NJ). Dr. Youngblood has spent the past twenty years working in public education, law and public policy. He joined the Watson Institute after serving as Special Assistant to the Superintendent for Leadership Development and Director of School Based Youth Services for the Trenton Public School District. The Watson Institute is an organization that seeks to respond to the needs of public-sector and non-profit decision-makers across New Jersey. Dr. Youngblood serves as Policy Adviser to the New Jersey Urban Mayors' Association (NJUMA) and the Watson Institute provides applied research, analysis and other assistance in response to the public policy needs of its partners that include 24 urban municipalities, state and local non-profits and grassroots/community-based organizations.
Dr. Youngblood earned a J.D. from the university of Iowa College of Law and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Crawford Fellow and received an interdisciplinary doctorate that combined anthropology, human development, public policy and education to study issues of race, culture, identity, and inequity in schools, political systems and society. Dr. Youngblood's recent research interests include the prediction of resiliency and the influence of identity processes for competence formation among urban children with special needs classifications.