The Public Affairs Faculty Manual

A Guide to the Effective Management of Public Affairs Programs

Bruce McDonald III, William Hatcher, Bruce D. McDonald III, William Hatcher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000041392
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Öffentlichsarbeit & Verwaltung

While public affairs faculty study administration and management techniques, few administrators of public affairs programs receive formal training in the nuts and bolts of academic administration. Even those faculty who come to academia after distinguished careers in managerial positions may not be ready for the very different (and difficult) environment of university administration. The Public Affairs Faculty Manual argues that public affairs as a field needs to ensure that knowledge about administration and management is applied to the running of its academic programs, and brings together major leaders in the discipline to explore key features of academic administration. Many of these leaders have served as Master of Public Administration (MPA) directors, chairs, and deans at the nation's top public affairs programs.

Crucial issues of academic administration discussed include the basics of public affairs programs, models of governance, roles of different administrative leaders, planning and budgeting for programs, navigating the accreditation process, assessing and improving student learning, ensuring social equity and cultural competency, mentoring faculty, developing curriculum, and helping provide service and applied research to community partners. Contributors have served as MPA directors, chairs, and deans at the nation's topic public affairs programs. Themes running throughout the book's chapters are examined, and additional resources to help manage public affairs programs are offered. This collection of essays and the strategies within it are designed to encourage faculty to assume positions of leadership in their programs and manage those programs in an effective, efficient, and fair manner. The Public Affairs Faculty Manual is required reading for new, seasoned, and aspiring academic administrators in public administration, public policy, and nonprofit management programs, as well as schools of government.

1

MANAGING YOUR PUBLIC AFFAIRS PROGRAM

William Hatcher and Bruce D. McDonald, III

Have you recently assumed an administrative role in your public affairs program? Maybe you have been asked to serve as director of your institution’s MPA program, or you are moving up the administrative ladder to serve as a chair or dean? Perhaps you are a faculty now, but have ambitions to lead public affairs programs? Maybe you are a seasoned academic administrator in public affairs, but you want to maintain your effectiveness in your current job? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, this book is for you.

While public affairs faculty study administration and management techniques, we are rarely trained in the nuts and bolts of academic administration. Even those faculty who come to academia after distinguished careers in managerial positions may not be ready for the very different (and difficult) environment of university administration. Newly appointed administrators may be lost when assuming the job. Data support this assertion. In a recent survey of MPA directors (Hatcher, Meares, & Gordon, 2017), a lack of training and mentoring were identified as major barriers blocking success. The lack of training for those who manage public affairs programs should be of concern to a field that is dedicated to teaching efficient and effective administration. We should practice what we preach.

Accordingly, public affairs as a field needs to ensure that we are apply our knowledge about administration and management to the running of our academic programs. In this book, we seek to start a conversation in the field on managing academic programs. We have asked leaders in public affairs to write about key features of academic administration in the field. Many of these leaders have served as MPA directors, chairs, and deans at the nation’s top public affairs programs. The book is intended to be a reference for academic administrators in our field, especially ones who are new in their leadership roles.

Today, public affairs programs face numerous challenges from a public that does not trust government and political elites that do not respect the crucial work of bureaucrats. In this time of crisis, public affairs programs have a responsibility to educate current and future managers to be efficient, effective, and fair. To accomplish this, public affairs programs need faculty who conduct cutting-edge and useful research, who are engaging and effective instructors, but who are also able, and willing, to apply evidenced-based management to their academic programs.

Challenges Facing Public Affairs Programs

In the United States (US), decades of anti-government rhetoric from political elites, the polarization of the political parties, and distrust of government among the general public has led to a maelstrom for government. The chaotic and at times anti-democratic administration of President Trump has placed additional stress on public administration in the US. Public affairs programs must educate and train the next generation of public servants to work in such an environment. To ensure that these academic programs are successful, the leaders of public affairs need to recognize that public administration is in a time of crisis. In other words, quoting Jeff Daniel’s character in The Newsroom, “[t]he first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one” (Sorkin & Mottola, 2012). We have a problem of governance in the US. In fact, we have multiple problems.

First, the public’s distrust of government erodes the ability of public administrators to serve their organizations and communities. This distrust of government has increased significantly, making the trend one of the most pressing problems facing public affairs programs (Kettl, 2018). But public administration holds solutions. In his 2018 presidential address at the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration’s (NASPAA) annual conference, Jack Meek stressed that programs need to answer the question of, “[g]iven the challenging of declining trust in government, how do we communicate the value of our programs?” (Meek, 2018, p. 151). According to Kettl (2018, 2019), this question can be answered and the problem of distrust can be addressed through citizens having positive interactions with public officials. Public administrators, focused on fairness, engaging citizens, and delivery of services to meet the needs of citizens, can make small but measurable steps toward repairing the public’s trust in government (Kettl, 2019).

Second, political leaders, from both major parties, are often not supportive of public administration and the work being done by the nation’s civil servants. Whether it is President Reagan saying “government is the program”¹ or President Clinton saying that “the era of big government is over,” public affairs has been plagued for decades with anti-government rhetoric in the American political discourse. In recent years, “bureaucrat bashing” has taken a darker turn. President Trump, his supporters, and aides, such as former strategist Steve Bannon, consistently discuss the need to “deconstruct the administrative state” (Katz, 2017). In 2017, for instance, President Trump even took the unprecedented step of engaging in bureaucrat bashing, while giving a foreign address in Poland, by discussing the bureaucracy as a “common” threat facing “Western democracies” (Katz, 2017). Being labeled a threat to democracy, clearly, adversely affects the work of public administrators. In one study, researchers (Garrett, Thurber, Fritschler, & Rosenbloom, 2006) found that bashing makes senior federal managers more likely to feel “hostile and frustrated” with politicians and the media (p. 228). Additionally, bashing harms morale, recruitment, and the development of employees (Garrett et al., 2006). Sadly, it appears that bureaucrat bashing negatively affects how public managers view themselves compared to their counterparts in the private sector. Chen and Bozeman (2014) found that state mangers in the US “perceive public sector inferiority with respect to worker creativity, talent, and autonomy” (p. 549).

In this environment of public distrust of government and bureaucrat bashing, public affairs programs face a number of specific challenges. The first challenge is that public affairs programs are pressured to increase their enrollments, but in recent years, due in part to the anti-bureaucracy environment, programs have experienced a decline in the number of students. In recent years, there have been declining enrollments in MPA programs (NASPAA, 2017). Declining enrollments place additional pressure on MPA directors. Universities are more likely to look to MPA programs and question their viability if enrollments are not consistently growing. Some universities may even seek to disband their MPA programs, as Governing magazine recounted in an article appropriately titled “Fighting to Save the MPA” (Kerrigan, 2011). In such an environment, directors have to make the case for the degree and the need for sustainable enrollments, not just uncontrolled growth.

The second challenge is that graduates from public affairs programs may be “sector switching” by finding employment in the private sector instead of working for public agencies and/or nonprofits. In recent years, a large percentage of graduates from NASPAA programs have found employment in the programs in the private sector (NASPAA, 2017). For instance, NASPAA’s 2016–2017 report on accredited programs found that 19 percent of graduates are employed by the private sector (NASPAA, 2017). Additionally, many of the graduates of top programs, such as Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (Chetkovich, 2003), find employment in the private sector. And recent research has found that millennials with advanced education, like an MPA, may be motivated by pay to switch from public service to the private sector (Johnson & Ng, 2016). There are positive aspects of sector switching from public to private. The demand of public affairs graduates in the private sector demonstrates the power of the field’s academic programs. Additionally, the problems of the public sector, such as declining budgets, makes the private sector more attractive to the graduates of public affairs programs, especially the ones from top universities. However, these graduates are not bringing their talent and skills to public organizations and/or nonprofits that desperately need that help, which should be a concern of public affairs programs.

This bring us to the third challenge. Public affairs programs are not adapting well to modern public administration. Just a few examples of this include: The curriculum of many public affairs programs does not offer adequate training in information technology to help public managers secure the vital data housed by public agencies and nonprofits. Many public affairs programs are not connecting the classroom with the community through service learning, community partnerships on applied research, and other experiential learning. Perhaps most concerning, public affairs programs are not working with key players to prepare for the upcoming wave of public-sector retirements in all levels of government (Maciag, 2013).

Public affairs programs face these challenges while experience declining resources for universities and public-sector employers. Public affairs programs have fiscal problems in recruiting faculty, funding travel for research, providing small class sizes, and adequately training their administrators (Hatcher et al., 2017). Employers, in particular governments and nonprofits, facing fiscal constraints have issues hiring graduates, providing internship experiences, and offering tuition reimbursements. These problems are not without solutions, of course. Over the last few years, the leaders of the nation’s top policy schools (Evans, Morrison, & Auer, 2019) have been working on what public affairs education should do during the current “turbulent” times. According to these leaders, public affairs programs can address the challenges through holding to the following principles: “(1) build sustained partnerships between public and educational sectors, (2) focus on competency-based learning, (3) instill a lifelong learning mind-set in students, and (4) integrate new modalities for learning” (p. 285).

Again, the first step to solving a problem is recognizing you have one, and public affairs programs are facing many challenges. So, our programs need stellar administrators to steer through the problems and achieve success.

Roles of the Public Affairs Program Director

In an environment of crisis, we need excellent faculty to serve as administrators of public affairs programs. Let us stress, assuming a leadership role in your program is service. The directors of public affairs programs are often servant leaders in that they are doing the job not because of personal gain, monetary or prestige, but because they believe in their academic programs and strive to impact the next generation of practitioners in the field.

If you are interested in an administrative job within the academia that has multiple challenges and where you will be taking on multiple roles, then the job for you is as the director of a public affairs program. The directors of public affairs programs wear multiple hats. They are recruiters, marketers, academic advisors, career advisors, assessment officers, planners, diversity advocates, supervisors, budget directors, fundraisers, and, of course, instructors (Brainard & Infeld, 2017; Vicino, 2017). Additionally, directors need to go beyond advocating diversity and help promote inclusive learning environments for faculty and staff (Edwards, Holmes, & Sowa, 2019).

With universities pressing academic programs to increase enrollments, directors of public affairs programs often find themselves spending hours marketing their programs and recruiting students. MPA directors label the pressure to recruit new students as the most pressing concern from their home institutions (Hatcher et al., 2017). To ensure that academic programs are diverse and reflect the communities that they serve, leaders also need to be advocates of diversity in their planning and recruitment efforts (Breihan, 2007).

Public affairs directors help students plan their academic programs of study, and leaders also provide career advice to students. Programs need to show that their graduates are able to secure employment, and their directors are held accountable. Some programs even combine the career and academic advising tasks into assessments, such as portfolios, to help students advance their careers (Williams, Plein, & Lilly, 1998).

Program directors are also supervisors of administrative staffs and graduate assistants, and in this managerial role some are responsible for programmatic budgets. Through managing budgets for their programs, directors find themselves being pressured to raise funds for scholarships, student and faculty travel, or even annual expenditures.

Often public affairs must perform these roles without much formal authority over other faculty, staff, and administrators at their universities. For instance, MPA directors normally do not have the authority of evaluating the performance of faculty, over the actors that they must convince to follow assessment plans, help with recruitment, and provide quality instruction that fits within the overall vision of a program. Leaders in such a situation need to rely on their ability to make the case for their desired actions.

In such demanding roles, public affairs directors need to be concerned with professional burnout. Such a feeling of exhaustion (World Health Organization, 2019) causes employees to disengage at work, and if the burnout becomes too intense employees will leave their positions, leading to costs for organizations (Kim, 2015). When it comes to MPA directors, many serve in the role in addition to their tenured faculty position. In such an employment situation, often directors can be the ones who decide to return to being primarily faculty. Accordingly, universities and public affairs units need to help ensure that MPA directors are supported and able to balance the competing demands in their professional and personal lives.

How Do We Find These Directors?

We do not want to completely scare you away from serving your programs in a leadership role and/or being interested in the nuts and bolts of program administration. Given the demands of program leadership and the roles that directors must perform, one can see the importance of the material covered in this book. In particular, one pressing concern is finding faculty who are willing to serve as program leaders and excel in the leadership positions.

Finding academic leaders, like finding a leader for any position, is difficult. For one, it is hard to convince faculty members to give up the freedom of being able to dedicate more time to their research and classes to work in a position that may not come with much more compensation, if any, and that is often a thankless post. However, public affairs directors tend to be satisfied with their jobs. In their survey of MPA and MPP directors, Killian and Wenning (2017) found that most respondents are satisfied in their...