"In the News" Archives

January/ February 2008

• Two KU Public Administration graduates were in the national spotlight when President Bush delivered his final State of the Union speech. Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (MPA 1977) was selected to give the Democratic response, and Greenburg, Kansas City Manager Steve Hewitt, a 2007 graduate of the Certified Public Management program, sat next to First Lady Laura Bush in recognition of his efforts to rebuild an environmentally friendly Greensburg after last spring’s tornado.
• In February, the Department will again host the National Forum of Black Public Administrators’ Executive Leadership Institute (ELI). The 2008 event will bring 16 participants from seven states to Lawrence for a three day program. ELI was established to sharpen the skills and capabilities of an elite core of managers and administrators who have already demonstrated superior achievement as assistant city managers, department heads, bureau chiefs, and the like. It is one of the few training institutes in the U.S. that mixes academic-based theory and practitioner-based experience.

2007

• The Wall Street Journal cited Dr. Michael Moody's research in a November 5, 2007 article, “Court May Rule on States’ Bonds.”
• Associate Professor Chuck Epp was among the fall 2007 recipients of the prestigious Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence. Read more.
• Doctoral student Shannon Portillo was awarded a 2007-08 Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation for her project “The Face of the State: The Role of Social Status and Official Position in the Mobilization of Authority.”
• Assistant Professor has been nominated by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) for the best paper award from the 2007 national conference held in Atlanta in November for her paper, “Examining the Civic Intermediary Role of Urban Nonprofits: Findings from a National Survey.”
• The Department welcomes Jared Llorens to the Public Administration faculty. Jared completed his PhD in 2007 in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia with a focus on human resource management. While completing his degree, he was named that department’s 2005-06 PhD Student of the Year.
• David Matkin, the Department’s first PhD graduate, has accepted a tenure-track position at the Reuben O’D. Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. David’s dissertation examined the management of state corporate income tax incentives, and was completed under Dr. George Frederickson.
• Assistant Professor Sanjay Pandey has been named to the Board of Editors of the International Public Management Journal , a publication of the International Public Management Network.
• Steven Maynard-Moody, Professor and Director of the Institute for Policy and Social Research, has been elected to the National Academy of Public Administration. His election makes KU’s Department of Public Administration the first in the country to have all full professors in the department as members of the prestigious academy. Read full story.
• The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART) the scholarly journal of the Public Management Research Association which has its secretariat in KU’s Public Administration Department, was selected as the #2 scholarly journal in the field of public administration for 2006. This ranking is determined by ISI Thompson Scientific (ISI) through their Social Science Citation Index. The Index ranks academic journals’ "citation impact factor,” a measure of the number of annual citations in all ISI-indexed journals in public administration and policy that cite articles in a particular journal, adjusted by the number of articles published in that journal. Professor George Frederickson is JPART’s editor-in-chief.