Update on the PA Program – Message from Department Chair Dr. Jerrell Coggburn

Greetings, friends!

I am happy to be writing to you in my reprised role as the department of Public Administration (PA) chair at the School of Public and International Affairs, which I resumed last July. It was my good fortune to return to the role right at the time the department began its latest surge of activities and accomplishments.

Indeed, the 2024-25 academic year saw significant change and there is much to share with you.

In terms of PA program leadership, I am happy to announce that Associate Professor Amanda Stewart has taken over as our MPA director. Mandi is an expert in nonprofit management and has amassed a stellar record of research, teaching and service since she joined the faculty in 2015. She brings new energy and focus to our MPA program in her first year at the helm, as you will see later in this newsletter.

We were thrilled to engage with our alumni this past year. Fifty-five people attended our annual PA Alumni Society luncheon, where Alumna Claudia Odom Hager, Durham County manager, was our guest speaker at the Talley Student Union. Odom spoke on “Leadership Lessons from the Public Sector Trenches,” which touched on some of her challenges in times of uncertainty and change. 

Dr. Jerrell Coggburn, Department of Public Administration Chair and Ph.D. Director

Shortly after she presented to us, Odom was unanimously promoted from deputy county manager to county manager, and earned praise for her outstanding tenure and seasoned leadership.  In addition to this event, PA faculty and students enjoyed meeting our alumni during the NC City & County Management Association’s (NCCCMA) winter meeting — we hope to build even stronger connections with this organization in the future.

We are also proud of Associate Professor Jim Brunet and his leadership of the Administrative Officers Management Program (AOMP). The AOMP program celebrated its 100th Session in Fall 2024. This successful program, which started in 1989, has graduated nearly 2,600 public safety personnel who go on to become proactive leaders that drive meaningful change in their organizations and communities across North Carolina. While there is a separate AOMP alumni society, we don’t want to miss out here on celebrating the program’s wonderful accomplishments.

For our doctoral program alumni, I am continuing with my role as Ph.D. program director, which I assumed in July 2023. This spring, our Ph.D. program prepared a self-study for its ten-year strategic program review. We look forward hosting a review team at the end of March and getting its recommendations for how we can further strengthen our program. It’s hard to believe that our 100^th Ph.D. student will be graduating from the program this Spring.  Since its inception in 1998, our graduates continue to find strong career placements in academia and research-focused sectors and make important contributions to scholarly literature (they have published hundreds of articles and over 20,000 citations).  In the past two years, our students have obtained academic placements at UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC Wilmington, Appalachian State, University of Nebraska at Omaha, College of Charleston, Meredith College, University of Arkansas Little Rock, and Duke University.

Turning to our faculty, we have hired five new faculty members in the past two years, bringing us to 14 full-time tenure-track faculty. We featured stories on Iseul Choi and Serena Kim in our last newsletter, you can read more about Graham Ambrose, Jay Rickabaugh, and our inaugural Bob and Carol Mattocks Distinguished Professor in Nonprofit Leadership, Hans Peter Schmidt, in stories below.

Our faculty maintain a number of important strategic relationships across campus. For example: Jeff Diebold is a contributor to NC State’s Data Science Academy; Christopher Galik was named Deputy Executive Director of NC State’s Climate and Sustainability Academy and a University Faculty Scholar; Jennifer Kuzma is the Director of NC State’s Generic Engineering and Society Center.  Branda Nowell remains co-principal investigator for NC State’s long running Fire Chasers project, which includes participants from CHASS and the College of Natural Resources, (among others); and Jay Rickabaugh is a member of the Science and Technologies for Phosphorus Sustainability interdisciplinary research team.

Finally, our team has recently finished writing Wolfpack 2030: Powering Excellence in Public Service, a strategic plan for Public Administration that has five goals: 1) Elevate our visibility and reputation; 2) Champion a strong and inclusive departmental culture 3) Align academic programs for public service impact; 4) Cultivate career success for students; 5) Strengthen external relations and leverage alumni networks. We are developing measurables and implementation steps and are already proceeding in many areas, which brings a lot of excitement to the department.

I will close with a note of gratitude to each of you. The amazing work you do in service to the public inspires us each and every day, which is much needed given the challenges facing the public and nonprofit sectors and higher education. We look forward to hearing about your successes and collaborating with you in new and exciting ways in the years to come. – Dr. Jerrell Coggburn