Aspects of public service often involve tasks sometimes considered taboo, including working with grit, grime, blood, guts, grease, and stigmatized populations. Yet scholarship in our field directly incorporating dirty work remains limited yet growing. Importantly, if MPA students are not trained in how to work with and manage public sector…

With the current shortage of school bus drivers in many states, access to education is at risk for the many students who get to and from school by bus. Despite the critical role drivers play, little is known about why they stay in their jobs, and what can be done to keep them. To learn more about school bus driver retention, 301 drivers in 32…

This dissertation intends to inform self-assessment and data collection practices within Rutgers University and act upon the encouragement of university leadership to advance the potential of the public service mission. These goals are accomplished by exploring relevant questions to inform the practices of institutional research (IR) and…

This paper discusses understandings of higher education and the public good in the context of Finland. A lexical-based comparison of public goods terminology reveals that the Finnish translation of public good--"julkishyödyke"--is used in comparatively recent (post-1970s) scholarship, mainly limited to the fields of economics, forestry…

The central challenge of social impact education within higher education is the lack of a shared framework to unify language and practice across an institution. One framework gaining popularity among Community Engagement Professionals (CEPs) is the Pathways of Public Service and Civic Engagement. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to…

Universities attend to multiple demands, making it challenging to identify their particular academic project, which can be defined as how the university understands its key purposes and develops its organisation and activities in service of such. While the three pillars of higher education -- teaching, research, and service -- are cited as being…

Purpose: This paper primarily aims to identify the multilevel learning processes emerging from abrupt telework implementation in a public knowledge-intensive organization (KIO) amid the COVID-19 crisis. Design/methodology/approach: This single-case process research was guided by interpretivist epistemology. Empirical data from documentary research…

Purpose: Vocational education in Hong Kong suffers from an image problem. Stakeholders often perceive it as a second-best option for those who fail to advance in academic education. In 2016, to promote vocational education, the Hong Kong government launched a publicity campaign and rebranded vocational education and training (VET) as vocational…

Public service internships are an established pedagogical tool in political science. Decades of scholarship on teaching and learning highlight how hands-on practicums can enhance students' substantive learning, professional development, civic values, and multicultural tolerance. Despite the proliferation of research on the student benefits of…

This dissertation studies two distinct but equally essential industries: higher education and water utilities. In the context of higher education, I investigate the impact of subsidies on equilibrium prices and quality levels. For water utilities, I explore the differences between public and private providers in terms of productivity and…

The use of algorithms and automation of public services is not new, but in recent years there has been a step change in processing power and a decrease in the price of these technologies, which means we are seeing more widespread use. These advances are reframing our perception of what matters in ways that impact the ethical dimensions of…

The preponderance of literature associated with school violence illuminates the severity of its manifestation in schools both nationally and internationally. The impact of school violence on students' physical and emotional well-being cannot be understated as this is commensurate with student academic achievement. The South African Government's…

This article analyzes a Participatory Action Research (PAR) Project focused on improving public safety and community lighting in one Latinx immigrant community in California as a case example to better understand the possibilities for university-community-government partnerships. The article explores residents' motivations for their sustained…

Collegiality and the contribution to the sustenance of the academy through academic citizenship are central to commonly held conceptions of what it is to be a university. This study investigates the articulation and recognition of academic citizenship through institutional promotion criteria, including both traditional research and…

The growing demand for language mediation across different domains of public service interpreting (PSI) poses a challenge for policymakers, stakeholders (institutional representatives, clients), and traditional interpreter education institutions. Alongside university-based interpreter education, different training formats have emerged…