Systematically examining the mentoring process for PhD students' needs to recognize that it has characteristics of unit/small batch production and relies heavily on the coproduction of the PhD student. This article examines one mentor's experiences with 80+ PhD students over an extended period of time using these conceptual lenses. Three general…

Traditional MPA programs that deliver public affairs education often use gender blind pedagogies. Gender blind pedagogies maintain that organizational practices and decision-making processes are gender neutral and have similar outcomes to both men and women who engage in public service. Gender neutral assumptions in PA education perpetuate gender…

Public affairs programs have long aimed to advance public service education. First defined as preparing public servants for government employment, public affairs programs have expanded to advancing the public interest and governance across all sectors. While modern public affairs programs have become more expansive in how they define public…

Using a unique dataset built around published papers in top quality public policy, public administration and program evaluation journals, we find that 29.7% of respondent authors indicate that the knowledge from their articles was used by policymakers or public administrators. These data are used to test for different patterns of use for policy vs…

As calls increase to give public affairs doctoral students more agency in their learning, we report on the effects of implementing professional development, self-reflection, and original research into a first-year, first-semester introductory doctoral seminar. Using Scott et al.'s framework, we purposively integrated elements of socialization and…

Many graduate public affairs programs offer both residential and online options for students. One of the challenges for multi-format programs is creating a sense of belonging among online students who may never set foot on campus. In 2017, the MPA program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill developed an "immersion" course…

Polarization is increasingly impacting Extension's work in communities. Extension has untapped potential to address division and lack of civility by building civic infrastructure and skills for constructive dialogue. We describe a pilot program that began as a one-off event and grew into a series organized by University of Wisconsin-Madison…

The gap between public managers and academics has long been a topic of discussion in the field of public affairs. This article presents a successful strategy to bridge this gap: the creation and use of local case studies in executive education for Portuguese public managers. We found that the creation process, which included interviews with…

This paper reported the findings from 18 qualitative interviews of students across two sections of an elective, standalone ethics course in a Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) accredited Master's of Public Administration (MPA) program at a northeast university. The findings suggested that a survey of…

Master of Public Administration (MPA) alumni face increasingly diverse and global professional expectations. Public affairs specialists generally go on to manage complex partnerships that involve a wide array of participants. Public administration education ought to do its part to ensure these graduates succeed. In this sense, we offer comparative…

There is limited empirical study that examines effective evaluation pedagogy on evaluation competency outcomes. The purposes of this article are to: (1) identify key course design features critical to integrating real-world projects in a course-based service-learning model; and (2) provide empirical data using mixed-methods evaluation to assess…

The academic practitioner divide and strategies to close that gap have been important lines of inquiry in the fields of public administration and public affairs. This study contributes to that significant body of work by reporting results from two surveys of faculty in NASPAA accredited programs and of practitioners affiliated with the…

The widening cracks in the foundations of American democracy are leading to appeals for higher educational institutions generally, and public affairs programs specifically, to offer more courses on civil discourse. In this paper, we conduct a curriculum scan to evaluate the extent to which public affairs programs have answered these calls at the…

Computer-based simulations in public affairs curricula are thought to better prepare graduates for responding to an increasingly complex public policy environment upon entering into or advancing within public sector careers. Using survey results from 221 participants in the 2021 NASPAA-Batten Pandemic 2.0 simulation competition, the authors…

In this dissertation, I quantify the impact of uncertainty on schooling postsecondary choices, study the returns to higher education degrees, and analyze the effects of policies that intend to reduce college education costs. In the second and third chapters, I employ structural Roy models and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth…