Author

Ellen Szarleta is the director of the Indiana University Northwest Center for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE) and interim director and professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUN. She has a doctorate in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a juris doctorate from the University of Iowa, and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the State University of New York at Fredonia. Before becoming director of CURE, she served as a Lake County Indiana Superior Courts magistrate, a Lake County deputy prosecutor and practiced law as a private attorney.  She also worked as a research associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, conducting policy studies in the areas of risk assessment, and economic recovery. She has resided in Lake County, Indiana, since 1995.