A Year to Celebrate

Greetings, friends! 

I am happy to be writing to you at the end of a significant academic year, one with many changes across the department and our university. On May 5, N.C. State welcomed our 15^th chancellor, Kevin Howell, after Chancellor Randy Woodson stepped down after serving our university admirably for 15 years. Chancellor Howell, a School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) alumnus, is an accomplished leader in his own right and we are all excited to have him at the University’s helm.  

Closer to home, I reprised my role as chair of SPIA’s Department of Public Administration last July. This marks my third–and most exciting–term as chair. We have assembled a stellar faculty, recruited outstanding students, and graduated talented students who, as proud alumni, are leading in their academic and public service roles. We channeled all of that energy into our new strategic plan, Wolfpack 2030: Powering Excellence in Public Service, and are well on our way to implementing initiatives that will both improve the quality of our programs and create public value in North Carolina and beyond. 

In addition to my new role, Associate Professor Amanda Stewart became our MPA director. Mandi is an expert in nonprofit management with a stellar record of research, teaching and service since she joined the faculty in 2015. And she has already proven to be an effective, strategic leader of our MPA program. Our student quality, graduation rates, and job placement rates have never been higher.

For our doctoral program, we have proudly graduated our 100th Ph.D. student this spring, which you can learn more about in the featured story in this newsletter. Here, I will just note that our graduates continue to find strong career placements in academia and other research-focused roles and make important contributions to scholarly literature (collectively, they have published hundreds of articles and over 20,000 scholarly citations).  We also just completed our ten-year Ph.D. program review and look forward to incorporating the review team’s recommendations into our Wolfpack 2030 plan.

I will close by sharing the same feel-good story that I shared with graduates during our spring commencement ceremony. Amid a sea of negativity about the public service (think DOGE), it was a delight to share The New York Times’ article about the Supreme Court’s tribute to Edwin S. Kneedler, a “citizen lawyer” who was praised for his loyalty to the law, nonpartisanship, and commitment to public service. The image of all nine justices giving a career public servant a standing ovation is one that resonates with me and, I suspect, all of us who are committed to developing and championing the next generation of public service leaders.

I hope you all have an enjoyable summer and look forward to seeing you at the 2025 NASPAA Global Conference in Flagstaff, AZ.