As the COVID-19 pandemic threatens American lives and disrupts daily routines, we continue to see front-line public servants step forward to battle the virus with persistence. Given the increasingly polarized COVID environment, the natural inclination is to ask: what is motivating these public servants to persevere in their work despite the…

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…

The work of crafting sustainable solutions to complex policy problems requires decision makers and implementers to secure buy-in from a diverse set of stakeholders. Those stakeholders operate in policy ecosystems that span public, for-profit, nonprofit, and entrepreneurial sectors. This increasingly complex landscape requires schools of public…