Stephen M. Gavazzi is a professor of human sciences in Ohio State University's College of Education and Human Ecology. He has written a variety of articles on town-gown issues for such periodicals as Innovative Higher Education, Planning for Higher Education, Municipal Universities and Assessment Update. He is the co-author, with West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee, of the 2018 book Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good and publishes the Land Grant Fierce blog.
Gavazzi also is president of College Town Assessment LLC, which houses the Optimal College Town Assessment (OCTA) device. The conceptual development and empirical testing of OCTA is described in his 2016 book The Optimal Town-Gown Marriage: Taking Campus-Community Outreach and Engagement to the Next Level. He earned his Ph.D. in family studies from the University of Connecticut.
