Dr. Kaifeng Yang, dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University–Newark, has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Fred Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Comparative Public Administration.
The Riggs Award, established by the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA)’s Section on International and Comparative Administration (SICA), recognizes those who have made significant, substantial, and widely recognized contributions to the conceptual, theoretical, or operational development of international, comparative, or development administration. The award is named in honor of Fred W. Riggs, a political scientist and pioneer in the field of comparative administration in the United States and a founder of the section.
Dr. Yang is known internationally as a scholar of government performance management, citizen engagement, public human resource management, and digital governance. He has been a fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) since 2012. He earned his PhD from Rutgers SPAA in 2003 and was awarded the 2018 SPAA Alumni Award for Academic Excellence for outstanding contributions to the intellectual, theoretical, and institutional advancement of public administration.