Lawrence Mohr

Professor Mohr was born in Los Angeles but grew up in Detroit.  He attended the University of Chicago, where he received his undergraduate degree, prior to pursuing his graduate degrees at the University of Michigan.  Also, before obtaining his doctorate at Michigan, Professor Mohr worked as a Public Health Advisor and Research and Demonstration Grant Consultant for the U.S. Public Health Service.   Since his early days in Detroit, Professor Mohr has lived in approximately twelve different cities, including Ann Arbor, Chicago, the DC area, the San Francisco Bay area, Singapore, and Guam. 

Professor Mohr taught at the University of Michigan throughout his career.  His research areas were organization theory, program evaluation, research methods, and the philosophy of social research.  He taught undergraduate honors courses as well as courses on organization theory, design, and behavior, statistics, public program evaluation, and the philosophy of social research.  In addition to his many years of tenure at the University, Professor Mohr served as a consultant for a number of organizations, such as the Government Accounting Office, National Institute of Education, National Institute of Justice, and National Science Foundation.  

In reminiscing about the Department, Professor Mohr says, “The 1960s and '70s were turbulent years for the Department. During much of that time I was Director of Graduate Studies. Many of the graduate students and some of the faculty were very interested in making the Department a much more permeable and hospitable place for women and minorities. Their tactics were often confrontational, thus arousing a good deal of resistance, but the Department, for whatever reasons, did move significantly in those directions and, to the best of my knowledge, has never regretted it.”

Professor Mohr’s advice to current and potential graduate students is “to think very hard about what social science research can accomplish,” something that he has thought and written about in his first and last books.  He is currently working on a book about the mystery of the sexuality of middle-class Victorian women.

Affiliations:

• Political Science Faculty (1966-1999)
• School of Public Policy (Gerald R. Ford School) Faculty (1966-1999)

Awards:

• The Donald T. Campbell Award of the Policy Studies Organization, "for outstanding methodological innovation in public policy studies," 1992

Fields of Study:

• Organization Theory
• Program Evaluation
• Research Methods
• Philosophy of Social Research