William Blomquist is Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, Professor of Political Science, and Adjunct Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He is also an affiliated faculty member of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, and the Center for Earth and Environmental Science. The focus of his teaching is American government and public policy.
He received his B.S. in Economics (1978) and M.A. in Political Science (1979) from Ohio University, and his Ph.D. in Political Science (1987) from Indiana University. He joined the IUPUI faculty in 1987.
His research interests concern governmental organization and public policies, with a specialization in the field of water institutions and water management. He is the author or co-author of several publications related to these topics, including the books Dividing the Waters (1992), Common Waters, Diverging Streams (2004), and Integrated River Basin Management through Decentralization (2006), and articles in Society and Natural Resources, Political Research Quarterly, Water Resources Research, and Natural Resources Journal, among others.
His research has been supported by the United States Geological Survey, the United States Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, the National Water Research Institute, the National Science Foundation, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and The World Bank. He serves on the Board of Directors of the American Ground Water Trust, the Research Advisory Board of the National Water Research Institute, and a study committee of the National Research Council on sustainable underground water storage.
He has provided formal and informal consultation to the United States Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Sandia National Laboratories, the International Center for Self-Governance, and local agencies involved in the management of water supplies in Southern California. He led an inter-agency planning process involving 33 agencies in Orange County, California, and has facilitated workshops for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, the University of California-Davis, and the University of California-Irvine.