Richard Smith is a Associate Dean for Research at Wayne State University - School of Social Work. He possess expertise in policy analysis, qualitative research, nonprofits, research, community development and 34 more skills. He is proficient in Spanish and Mongolian. Colleagues describe him as "Rick is a fountain of knowledge in the urban planning field, a leading force of bringing intellectual gravitas and integrated systems thinking to the development of ecocity standards." and "Richard Smith worked with us for 5 years as a Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) at the California Social Work Education Center (CalSWEC). CalSWEC, the nation's largest state coalition of social work educators and practitioners, is a consortium of 21 accredited social work graduate schools, 58 California county departments of social services and mental health, the California Department of Social Services, and the California Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Richard was involved in all aspects of our research. He prepared survey materials; tracked participants; scheduled, conducted, and transcribed interviews; cleaned and analyzed data; and assisted in writing and preparing research reports. He has a vast statistical knowledge and is masterful with many statistical applications as well as geographical information systems. Richard’s work is outstanding. He has strong research, statistical, and writing skills, all of which he employed in his research efforts with CalSWEC. With his assistance we were able to produce advanced statistical reports of the caliber that we had not achieved prior to his work. Richard became an asset to our program and staff meetings with his understanding of government policy and programs in other states and at the national level. In his last year with us, Richard took a leading role along with Dr. Sherrill Clark in conducting the California Statewide Child Welfare Workforce study. He was responsible for contacting the county agencies and administering the agency characteristics portion of the study. He compiled and analyzed the data and assisted in the preparation the comprehensive report along with Dr. Clark. Richard presented papers at a number of conferences both nationally and internationally from our research and other projects at UC Berkeley. He also published the results of work he completed with us and UC Berkeley. Mr. Smith brings to his work a vast amount of experience from his work with HUD and other government and community based organizations. He has an incredible knowledge base of social services, current events, government policy and operations, and research. I could say more about his knowledge base but suffice it to say, he is an extremely knowledgeable person and his vita reflects this knowledge and experience. Richard is intelligent, energetic, articulate, and very personable. He worked more like a colleague than a graduate student assistant. Each of the projects undertaken by Mr. Smith in his time with us required the kinds of skills, abilities, and thoughtfulness necessary for outstanding thesis and dissertation work, yet he performed the work on these independent projects while also working on his own dissertation and major papers. Only a few of the graduate students who have worked with us produced the quality of work that Richard generated. He was by far one of the best graduate students who have ever worked with us. I am honored to write this recommendation for him."