About My Work

Here you’ll find an overview of my professional background, research, teaching, and engagement with practitioners and professional associations. Explore this page to learn more about what I do and why I do it.

My Professional Background

I am a social scientist and professor at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, where I research and teach public and nonprofit management. I received my PhD and MPA from the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia (UGA) and a BA in History from Oberlin College.

Before pursuing an academic career, I served as the Director of Programs at Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit. Mosaic is an internationally acclaimed youth development nonprofit that has performed with artists such as Maya Angelou, Aretha Franklin, and Sweet Honey in the Rock.

My Research

My research is published in several of the highest-impact public affairs journals including Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Public Administration Review, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. I was honored to receive the 2018 Best Dissertation Award from the Academy of Management (AOM) Public and Nonprofit Division, the 2021 Felice Perlmutter Paper Award from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) Theory Issues and Boundaries Section, and the 2022 Best Conference Paper Award from the Midwest AOM.

My research centers language- from organizational mission statements to interviews with individuals- because people use language to make sense of and communicate their understandings of identities, experiences, and broader social structures in which they are embedded. My research draws on a variety of methods with divergent assumptions about whether the meaning of language is fixed, or the outcome of interpretive processes shaped by power. By integrating insights from qualitative, traditional quantitative, and computational approaches for analyzing large textual datasets (text mining, machine learning, etc.), I make distinct contributions to public affairs scholarship.

I have three streams of research, which I describe briefly below. See my CV and Research page for more detailed information on my published research.

Mapping nonprofit change using organizational language and AI

My pioneering research in this stream leverages both traditional qualitative and new computational methods like text mining and machine learning to map nonprofit mission and activity language to address long-standing questions from organizational theory and nonprofit studies, while simultaneously providing practical insight into nonprofit responsiveness to community challenges.

Understanding (in)equity and (in)justice in public and nonprofit organizations

While many public and nonprofit organizations have mission-based or operational commitments to equity and justice, my research in this stream examines how people experience and seek to address challenges to the fulfillment of these values in practice. This work primarily uses traditional qualitative approaches to analyze interviews and organizational archives.

Analyzing journal article content to understand public affairs research

Public affairs is a multidisciplinary field that both produces knowledge relevant to the field and integrates knowledge across academic disciplines and areas of practice. Using frameworks and bibliometric methods from the science of science, my work helps public affairs scholars understand their contributions in a broader academic context and increase the impact of our field.

Teaching

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on managing, leading, and researching public and nonprofit organizations.

In 2020, I received the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. My students are important to me and I was humbled to receive this honor based on their nominations and evaluations. I was also surprised when the award was announced in the middle of my class, with Dean Trevor Broan and my parents on hard to celebrate!

PUBAFRS 3500: Public Management

The purpose of this core course is to provide students with the conceptual background and practical tools necessary to effectively work in public (government) organizations. The course introduces public management concepts and helps students gain the competencies required to address management challenges. Students explore big questions related to the management of public organizations, such as: (1) What makes an organization public? (2) How does the internal and external operating environment of public organizations affect management practice? (3) How is the performance of public organizations measured? (4) What makes for an effective public manager? This is accomplished through the exploration and application of conceptual frameworks and insights from research. I use multiple learning modalities including lectures, case studies, group exercises, and out-of-class assignments to provide students with diverse opportunities to engage with course content. The course focuses on local, state, and federal government organizational contexts, while also addressing the role of private and nonprofit organizations in public service delivery.

PUBAFRS 6060: Managerial Leadership in Public and Nonprofit Organizations

Public and nonprofit organizations are designed to solve complex problems. Those who are responsible for managing such organizations need to assemble talented and committed individuals and lead them toward achieving their organization’s public service mission. Furthermore, public, and nonprofit managers often need to make things happen with limited resources, and under less-than-ideal conditions and time frames. To achieve organizational goals, managers and leaders must be able to: support people from various backgrounds, interests, and skill sets in working together and contributing towards the organization’s mission; engage people both inside and outside of the organization; optimize the structure and culture of the organization even as employees/volunteers work from home or other remote locations; make effective decisions with limited information, and under uncertain conditions; and drive change for higher organizational performance. Public Affairs 6060 is designed to provide students with the opportunity to understand and apply management practices and analytical frameworks grounded in behavioral and social science research and tested by organizational leaders.

PUBAFRS 8040: Doctoral Seminar in Organizational Behavior and Theory

The primary goal of this course is to provide students with an overview of the major theoretical perspectives in public management research. Formal organizations and organizing processes are now ubiquitous in modern society. They dominate most facets of our social life including education, employment, family, recreation, religion, and politics. Organizational scholars have developed a set of theoretical approaches in an effort to explain how organizations form, survive, grow, change, compete, interact, influence, and address problems that are internal and external to their boundaries. The fields of organizational behavior and theory have a rich history and tradition but are also constantly changing as new developments challenge our understanding of how organizations, both public and private, function. This course is designed to provide doctoral students in public affairs and related disciplines with an introduction to organizational research and demonstrate how such perspectives can aid our understanding of public management and policy issues. Given the focus is on theory, methodological issues will move to the background. Empirical material will be used to illustrate how knowledge is produced from a particular standpoint and used to answer