Student Archives

Meg is a current student from Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis where she studied Political Science, Geography & Global Societies, and Peace & Conflict Studies.

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I chose to pursue an MPA because I have always been drawn to high-impact work that shapes communities in meaningful ways. Through my experiences working with local governments, nonprofits, public-private organizations, and private companies in college, I recognized the value of an MPA in bridging my work in these sectors and equipping me with the skills to advance my career. I chose UNC because of its welcoming community, the School of Government’s strong reputation both in North Carolina and nationally, and the opportunity to be part of a growing region with dynamic economic development and local government opportunities.

Before joining the program, I gained diverse internship experiences. My first internship was with Project C.U.R.E., an international nonprofit, where I researched potential funders and drafted letters of intent to secure grant funding for medical supplies distributed to Ukraine and other countries in need. I also interned with the City of Indianapolis, where I worked across multiple departments, including the Office of Education and Innovation, the Department of Metropolitan Development, and the Office of Public Health and Safety. I then joined VOX Global, a public affairs agency, where I supported over 25 accounts, ranging from national banks to local nonprofits. Finally, I interned with Downtown Indianapolis Inc., where I contributed to the establishment of an Economic Enhancement District and led a survey assessing the impact of events on local businesses.

Q3: What has been the most valuable course or experience in the MPA program thus far?

One of the most valuable experiences in my MPA journey has been the opportunity to apply public administration theories to real-world challenges. Whether it’s engaging stakeholders or developing strategic policies, the program has provided a hands-on understanding of how effective leadership and collaboration drive meaningful change. A key part of this has been the variety of guest speakers in different classes, who bring class concepts to life and demonstrate their real-world applications in the public administration field. This exposure to practitioners has deepened my understanding of course material and reinforced the program’s practical focus. Building on this, the most impactful experience so far has been attending the NCEDA Career Trek. This event featured panels of incredibly knowledgeable professionals who provided context for much of what I learned in my Managing Economic Development elective in the fall. I also formed connections with professionals who have become mentors and have supported me with class projects. These relationships have been invaluable in shaping my academic and professional journey.

I have found it manageable to balance coursework with personal and professional opportunities. The class schedule provides ample time to fully commit to assignments while allowing flexibility for networking, attending conferences, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance—whether that means going to UNC sporting events, spending time with friends, or working out. This flexibility has enabled me to attend the ICMA National Conference, where I connected with local government professionals from across the country, and the NCEDA Career Trek, which deepened my understanding of economic development in North Carolina.

My favorite part of being in the UNC MPA community is, broadly, the people. This program has given me meaningful friendships that I truly cherish and know will be long-lasting. We are also fortunate to learn from professors who are both experts in their fields and dedicated mentors, making classes engaging, fun, and impactful. Additionally, the strong alumni network has been an invaluable part of my experience—alumni have been incredibly generous, offering guidance, support, and insights that have enriched my journey in the program.

Q6: What is your advice to someone considering the program or graudate school in general?

To anyone considering this program, my advice is to stay open-minded and curious. You may enter with a clear career path in mind, but some of the most valuable growth comes from exploring new perspectives and opportunities. Build relationships with peers, professors, and alumni, and take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Staying flexible will help you make the most of this experience and uncover new passions along the way. I also thought two years would feel long, but now that I’m nearly halfway through, I can say it flies by—so embrace every moment and enjoy the journey!

I’m spending my summer with the Granville County Manager’s Office, where I’m supporting County Administration in coordinating agency activities and aligning departmental work with the vision of the Board of Commissioners. I’m also assisting individual departments—especially economic development and budget—through various research projects, data analysis, content creation, and more. The role allows me to contribute to ongoing initiatives while gaining a deeper understanding of how county government operates across departments.

Outside of school, I enjoy barre and other fitness classes, exploring new coffee shops and restaurants, attending sporting events, listening to The Mel Robbins Podcast, and traveling whenever I can.

Joshua Baird loves working in local government. He is using his engineering expertise to enhance infrastructure, implement environmentally sustainable practices and ensure the town’s water and sewer utility is both efficient and fiscally responsible. Queue in the MPA from UNC where he is gaining long-range planning skills and big picture decision making-skills to help support his areas of responsiblity.

Catch up with fellow alumni, faculty, staff, and meet current students at the annual UNC MPA Alumni Breakfast held during the NCCCMA Winter Conference in Winston-Salem.

This event is open to UNC MPA faculty, alumni, and current students. Registration required.

Graduates of the UNC Master of Public Administration program gathered Saturday, December 14 to celebrate commencement. Friends, faculty, and staff convened to honor the 16 graduates as they begin the next phase of their public service journey.

During the ceremony, graduates were hooded and pinned by UNC MPA Director Willow Jacobson. In her remarks, she congratulated her former students on their successful completion of the program and urged them to remain passionate in their pursuit of public service—a hallmark trait of UNC MPA graduates.

“Congratulations to the Master of Public Administration graduates. Your dedication, hard work, and passion for public service have brought you to this momentous achievement,” she said. “The mission of the MPA program is ‘to prepare public service leaders and create useable knowledge that improves governance.’ The leaders graduating today join an amazing alumni base that continues to have meaningful and impactful change in the organization and communities in which they work. We are incredibly proud of you and excited to see the remarkable contributions you will make in the future.”

Read about two of our recent graduates – Madeline Milligan and William Summer as they tell us about their post-graduation plans and how the MPA has helped shape their career.

Academics: Bachelor of Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013 and MA in Teaching and ESL Edication in 2015 from College of William and Mary.

I am a dual-degree student in Library Science and I wanted an MPA to give me the leadership skills and understanding of public systems needed to serve citizens in library settings more effectively and efficiently.

Recently, Dr. Stephens recognized a need to explore the impacts of artificial intelligence on the public sector, so he taught an immersive, weekend-long intensive class on the topic this semester. I served as his teaching assistant and evaluated hundreds of articles as a part of our work together.

Dr. Stephens is an expert on mediation and conflict resolution. My major responsibility involves analyzing, summarizing, and synthesizing research articles pertaining to all kinds of citizen and government interaction including food policy councils, coproduction, and law enforcement advisory boards.

It has opened my eyes to the breadth of topics that can be covered under the umbrella of public administration. Further, I have learned how everyday citizens can impact public services through a variety of volunteer and advisory board roles.

After graduation, I initially want to be a school librarian where I work with youth on civic engagement. Eventually, I would like to use the leadership skills I have developed in the MPA program to be a director of school libraries or youth services director for a large local or state library system.

Christopher ‘Layne’ Cole is from Roxboro, NC, a small town about an hour north of Durham where he grew up on a small farm. He went to UNC Asheville and graduated with an economics and international studies major and minors in human rights law and political science.

We sat down to talk with Layne about his recent work with the NC benchmarking project. Also, note that while we are interviewing Layne about this project, there are 3 other research assistants (Keegan Huynh, Noah Ellington, and Kirsten Tucker, who are also working on this project and are doing equally as important work.

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Layne: I was kind of all over the place with my undergrad, but I have always been civically and politically minded. If I have to work, I want it to be for the betterment of my community and for the people that I care about. I love North Carolina, and I knew I wanted to stay here. Once I graduated I heard about the program called Lead for North Carolina from a friend of mine. I applied, got accepted, and became aquainted with the School of Government, the faculty and staff, and all the opportunities in local government across North Carolina. I got to know the program, and it seemed like a great community with a lot of really good resources and networking.

Q: We hear you are working with Dr. Obed Pasha on the benchmarking project. Could you tell us more about what this is and what your work entails?

I started with Dr. Pasha during my first semester in the program as a graduate assistantship, and it turned into a research assistantship. The original benchmarking project started in 1995 as a way for municipalities to come together and compare their services and their performance trends with other participating municipalities in North Carolina. When Dr. Pasha was hired, it became known as benchmarking 2.0 because it was focused on an overhaul of the data collection system and expanding the project to include more municipalities and peer conversations about best practices. But benchmarking as a field and as a subject, is about gathering data on your organization’s performance and metrics and then comparing that throughout multiple years (and also with comparable organizations), so that you can find new solutions to wicked problems, or, you know, timely issues. We work with 17 municipalities as of now, and we have give or take 15 service departments. It really is all about making local government better.

Layne: We collect fire service data from every municipality that we work with, and it gets down to a very granular level to the amount of fires put out within 10 min. When that is tracked, and a municipality has a high level of number of fires that have been put out quickly, they can have a conversation with other local governments about how they do that and what resources they use to get this done. Then other local governments can start to advocate within their own government about funding resources and best practices to implement to do better.

Layne: It’s really three aspects we work to support. First is the data collection. We create a dashboard that’s publicly available, and this allows municipalities or even public citizens to compare service departments, metrics, and see how high performing or low performing your municipality is compared to the rest of North Carolina. The second part are the performance strategy sessions. This is where all 17 municipalities, representatives from different departments come together at the School of Government to have conversations about what best practices are what issues they’re running into. They take and borrow from each other, and we provide the space for that. And then lastly is an annual report about new and best practices that came out of these sessions that is then sent to every participating municipality. And also it becomes a publicly available resource on our website (here is 2023’s report).

Layne: We need public leaders now more than ever and people willing to push the envelope and work with new ideas and innovation. My experience has been that local governments are open to this level of experimentation, and that frequent narrative that it’s bearucratic and set in their ways is not what I have seen from this work. It made me hopeful.

Personally, it has helped me with hard and soft skills as a leader. I work very closely with the other RA’s assigned to this project – Keegan Huynh, Noah Ellington, and Kirsten Tucker. I’ve learned how to communicate with local government professionals, academics, and my fellow peers. Dr. Pasha really empowers us to make our own decisions, and even though he’s the subject matter expert, he really respects our opinion and wants us to be leaders in our own right.

Layne: Dr. Pasha is not only a great professor, but he’s also just a great person. He’s really caring and thoughtful, and I think that is a pillar of a good leader. Communication and collaboration is the foundation of how we work together. You know, we always bounce ideas back and forth, and I think that leads to a lot of success. But with that, we are very empowered to work independently and use our own skill set to make the benchmarking project better.

Q: Can you give us an example of something you initiated or implemented with this project?

Layne: As you can imagine, manually auditing data is a big part of this project, and validity is crucial for the service we provide, so I reached out to the AI Club on campus and proposed that they work with us to create a program that will clean or flag data audit before we check it and really streamline that system. The proposal was accepted and over the next year we’ll be working with the AI Club to create a program that will improve our data collection and really offer an opportunity for more robust analysis.

Research Assistantship: Hallie has been working for ncIMPACT since she began the MPA program in August 2023. ncIMPACT aims to provide sound data, research, and analysis to civic leaders and policy influencers across the state. It also helps to provide evidence-based insight and creative policy options for public leaders through an enhanced understanding of innovative practices happening in North Carolina, across the U.S., and around the world.

Current Project: Hallie’s current project in collaboration with ncIMPACT and NCGrowth is evaluating North Carolina’s system of economic development tiers. The North Carolina County Tiers system was originally developed to encourage job creation in economically distressed counties by providing tax incentives. Since its inception, the Tiers system has also been used to allocate school funds, determine health care provider loan forgiveness, and more. She’s participated in and coded around 20 research interviews with state and local leaders in economic development and is contributing to a draft report that will inform policy makers on whether this system accomplishes its stated purpose. To read more about the purpose and challenges of this tier system, Hallie helped write this blog post.

The economic development tier system is intended to help funnel money and businesses into economically distressed areas with low income and low employment. So places with low income or low employment and stuff like that. As the system currently sits, it doesn’t do that effectively. And so people often want to change it. Our goal is to help streamline the system and ensure the money that this system brings in goes where it’s supposed to go and help advance those distressed communities.

Q: What are some things you’ve gotten personally or professionally out of this experience?

Probably number one is, I’ve learned a lot about how to interact with people in the field. I feel like before I did this, I was kind of like, ‘Whoa, they work for the state.’ That they’re high up there. That’s scary. But now I’m just kind of like, okay, everyone knows each other, and you just gotta talk to them like a person, and they’ll talk to you like a person. And I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of good experience like figuring out how to communicate in a professional way, but also a way where you are not shrinking yourself down. And then the second thing is I’ve learned a lot about working professionally on a team. Our team (ncIMPACT) is relatively small but we work with another team (NCGrowth), and so it’s been really helpful to see how we all support each other and also be able to look ahead at how to prioritize things in the future. It’s been a great experience of making sure your voice is heard while not forcing your will. Teams often have very different working styles and experiencing these different styles has been important for me professionally.

Q: As you gear up to graduate next semester, where do you see your career going?

I’m really excited about the work and the type of organization that ncIMPACT is. I plan to seek out other government-adjacent organizations like ncIMPACT or similar non-profits where the work goes hand in hand with a lot of community level organizations, state level organizations, and local government organizations. I really just realized I like the intersection of all these constituents and this collaboration towards the same goal.

This interview highlights the rewarding research work of Lilly Parker, an MPA student as she works with Dr. Teshanee Williams and nonprofit organizations to find new ways to objectively measure what these organizations use to achieve their missions.

Lilly Parker: I’m from Louisville, Kentucky. After undergrad at Wake Forest, I moved to Atlanta to teach. But now, I’m loving life in North Carolina, especially the Triangle area. I live in Chapel Hill, but I have friends in Durham and Raleigh, so it’s great having all three cities nearby. The Triangle area has so much to offer, and it’s such a welcoming place. Living in a college town like Chapel Hill has been a unique experience. There’s a real sense of community and creativity here.

Lilly Parker: Yes! So, I work with Dr. Teshanee Williams, who is the main nonprofit management professor in the MPA program. This semester, she’s teaching the nonprofit management class online, and next semester she’s teaching a class on local government and nonprofit collaboration.

I was really excited when I got paired up with her for my RA job because I’ve always been interested in nonprofit management. One thing that attracted me to the UNC MPA program was its focus on cross-sector collaboration, especially between nonprofits and local governments. So, when I learned I’d be doing research with Dr. Williams, I was thrilled. Her research is centered around nonprofit capacity building and collaboration between the public sector and nonprofits.

Q: Can you tell me more about the concept of capacity building that you’re working on?

Lilly Parker: Absolutely! Nonprofit capacity refers to everything an organization uses to achieve its mission. We are examining five different components of capacity: organizational, resource, network, political, and programmatic.

When I first met with Dr. Williams, she explained that in her previous research, review boards often mentioned the need for a more objective way to measure capacity. Most current methods rely on surveys filled out by executive directors, who might unknowingly or knowingly answer in ways that reflect positively on their organizations. So, we’re designing an objective way to measure capacity. It’s really exciting because I’ve been involved since the beginning stages, and Dr. Williams is walking me through every step.

Lilly Parker: We started by reviewing the existing literature on how capacity is measured, focusing on whether it has been measured objectively in the past. I wrote a literature review based on our findings, and we decided on our research variables. We’re looking at how revenue diversification—like getting funds from many different sources such as government grants, foundations, earned income, and/or individual donations—correlates with each component of capacity.

Right now, we’re finishing up designing the tool that we will use to measure each component of a nonprofit’s capacity. We are also beginning to collect available data on Smart Start, the organization we will be studying. Dr. Williams has been an incredible mentor, guiding me through each phase. This has been especially helpful since I didn’t have a ton of prior research experience.

Q: Did you always know you wanted to work in the nonprofit sector? What drew you to this position?

Lilly Parker: My journey into the nonprofit sector started in high school and undergrad. I volunteered with many organizations like the Boys and Girls Club in Louisville and Latino Community Services in Winston-Salem. These experiences helped me realize that I love volunteering for nonprofits and working with kids. After college, I taught for three years but quickly realized that there were many systemic issues affecting my students that I couldn’t address as a teacher. That’s what inspired me to pursue the MPA—I want to work in organizations influencing system-level change. Nonprofits have always appealed to me because of their mission-driven work and the autonomy they have in how they operate.

Q: That’s such an inspiring journey. How has it been working with Dr. Williams?

Lilly Parker: She’s incredible to work with. We meet weekly, and she’s very committed to guiding her students. She walks me through her thought process, explains what we’re trying to achieve, and then trusts me to carry out the work. It’s been a fantastic learning opportunity.

One thing I really appreciate about Dr. Williams is her commitment to making sure that her research directly benefits the communities and organizations we study. She ensures that our research provides practical tools that nonprofits can use to improve their capacity.

Lilly Parker: I’m still figuring that out! I want to work in the nonprofit sector, ideally as an advocate for children and families. The MPA program is great because it’s giving me a wide range of skills, from law to financial management to HR. I’m taking grant writing next semester, which I think will be super useful. I’m leaning towards roles in either development or program management, but I’m open to exploring different options.

After a summer state government internship and a waste audit, Brianna Beadle is back to studying public administration.

By Joshua McCormack, University Communications, Wednesday, September 11th, 2024

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Florida Atlantic University, Beadle took time off to work in the Florida Student Power Network, where she serves as part of their advisory board. She is now in Chapel Hill pursuing a dual master’s degree in public administration with the UNC School of Government and the city and regional planning department in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Despite the intense workload a dual master’s degree entails, Beadle was not interested in having a quiet summer. Instead, she spent most of her time interning with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

“It was my job to research composting across the state and find how recycling can feed into our economy,” Beadle said. “I would talk to individuals at composting recycling facilities and ask how they believed they were affecting their community.”

Beadle says it was eye-opening to see how political machinations and cynicism among state residents influenced either a negative or indifferent response to composting in many communities. Certain projects, however, reminded her of the positive impact composting can have.

“I worked on a waste audit at the department’s building where we implemented a composting bin and then analyzed a day’s worth of trash,” Beadle explained. “We found out that after implementing the bin, we had reduced waste in the building over the summer.”

Beadle was also inspired by the hard work of the department’s team. When she wasn’t gathering statistics or doing field site visits to different North Carolina counties, she sat in on meetings listening to individuals talk about making a difference.

“One of the most impactful things was when I got to do a Q&A with the DEQ secretary Elizabeth Biser,” Beadle said. “Just having someone at her level say, ‘Hey, there’s a future for you on this career path’ was really important.”

Biser and others have provided inspiration for what Beadle can do after her time at Carolina. She has developed a passion for state government and believes this summer’s experience with the DEQ gave her an understanding of how environmentalism is feasible in our economy.

“I learned so much about how our climate and economy are intertwined,” Beadle said. “I’d love to have a role in telling people how renewable energy is feasible and how to embrace composting. I want to let people know there’s a way to slowly transition to better resources for our environment.”

This year at Carolina, Beadle is looking forward to expanding her knowledge in housing and community development. She will also serve as president of the MPA’s Diversity Committee, in which she hopes to showcase different career opportunities in public administration that celebrate diversity.

No matter what Beadle accomplishes during her time here at Carolina or in the years that follow, there can be no doubt that her work will be for the betterment of the community.

Join David Yokum, JD, PhD, North Carolina’s Chief Scientist in the Office of State Budget & Management and Professor of the Practice and Director of The Policy Lab at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Data Science & Society, who will lead a panel discussion about AI’s current landscape as it relates to the policies and programs in public service and local government.

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