Paula Alexander Becker, Ph.D., J.D.

Paula Alexander Becker earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Rutgers University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, New Brunswick, New Jersey and her J.D. from New York University School of Law in New York.  Dr. Alexander Becker has taught in the graduate Masters, Human Resource Management and MBA programs of the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, as well as the undergraduate business program.  Paula is an expert in affirmative action.  She worked with counsel in New Jersey's major reverse discrimination case, publishing “Affirmative Action and Reverse Discrimination: Does Taxman v. Board of Education of Piscataway Township Define the Outer Limits of Lawful Race-Conscious Voluntary Affirmative Action?” in The Seton Hall Journal of Constitutional Law.  Ms. Alexander Becker serves as the Secretary of the Sidney Reitman Employment Law American Inn of Court, the only employment law Inn of Court in the United States.   Dr. Alexander Becker is also an expert in collective bargaining, the subject of her doctoral dissertation and a number of publications.  She has a consulting practice in employment and labor law, and in human resource management; she negotiated in the role of special labor counsel for a township in Bergen County with its municipal employees who were unionized by the Teamsters.

Dr. Alexander Becker collaborated with the Seton Hall Institute of Work and the American Management Association on the AMA's 1999 Contingent Worker Survey. She received a grant to analyze the relation between a firm's utilization of contingent workers and its profitability, among publicly held companies. She collaborated with Seton Hall’s Institute for Work to develop and offer a Workforce Management Conference:  Coming Together and Getting the Job Done, at Seton Hall University.  The conference was co-sponsored by The Employers Association of New Jersey and Center for Human Resource Studies, Fairleigh Dickinson University.  Paula has been a speaker at the SHRM New Jersey State Conference and other conferences, speaking on affirmative action, sexual harassment and the utilization of contingent workers.

Paula has developed the MBA curriculum on Corporate Social Responsibility, which is a required course in for the MBA, and she is authoring a textbook, Corporate Responsibility in a Global Context.  Her most recent research examines the relationship between firm financial performance and its ethics. 

Paula has been working with Seton Hall initiatives on service learning since these programs originated at Seton Hall University.  She has directed student projects serving such organizations as Fami-Care, an organization oriented toward the Haitian community in Irvington, New Jersey,  The Aids Resource Center of Newark, the Jewish Center for Developmentally Disabled, The Rahway Geriatric Center,  The New Jersey Battered Women’s Service of Morris County, The Girls and Boys Club of Clifton, New Jersey, ARC of Somerset County, The Iron Bound Community Organization of Newark, New Jersey, as the United Vailsberg Service Organization.  Dr. Alexander Becker has directed the service project of the Stillman School of Business MBA candidates, since May 2000, when a service component was established as a requirement for MBA degree. 

Dr. Alexander Becker has served several the boards of several University outreach organizations, including the Asia Center and the Sister Rose Thering Endowment and the Institute of Work.  She collaborated with the directors of the Institute of Work on conferences about the utilization of contingent workers in the new economy, as well as creating an expert report to assist plaintiffs in litigating their claim that they were “perma-temps” and as such were entitled to the benefits and privileges of regular employees.  The Sister Rose Thering Endowment Board fights anti-Semitism, and the documentary of Sister Rose won the Tribeca Film Festival award for the best short documentary, and it was nominated for an academy award.  The Asia Center has a long and auspicious history, being the one of the first centers established after World War II to develop language and cultural expertise.  Dr. Alexander Becker has earned a Masters Degree in Asian Studies, from Seton Hall University.

Previously, while at Rutgers University, Paula engaged in training for CETA, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, legislation which was oriented to offsetting the downside of plant closings and the transfer of manufacturing from the industrial North East and the Midwest to “green fields,” including the non-union South and non-US locations.  Paula has spoken at conferences and published in the area of the impact of plant closings on firm financial performance.  She has also researched early studies of the impact of technology on organizational functioning, which was published by the National Technical Information Service.