Faculty, staff, family, and friends gathered on May 7, 2022, to celebrate the graduation of the UNC School of Government’s Master of Public Administration students. The event, held in person at the William and Ida Friday Center for the first time since 2019, celebrated the accomplishments of Summer 2021, Fall 2021, and Spring 2022 MPA graduates. Audiences also joined the ceremony remotely via livestream through the University.
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In advance of this weekend’s Spring 2022 Commencement ceremonies, the UNC School of Government is highlighting stories of its upcoming Master of Public Administration graduates.
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Master of Public Administration program at the School of Government has once again been named one of “America’s Best Graduate Schools” by U.S.
The School of Government is proud to announce Shelton “Shelli” Rebecca Latham as the August 2021 recipient of the UNC MPA program’s Mengel Award for Communication. This award was created to honor MPA students who distinguish themselves through clear, concise, and outstanding writing, as well as to pay tribute to the award’s namesake, Nanette Mengel. All MPA Students are eligible for the award, both on campus and online.
On November 11, 2021, the School of Government and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill celebrate Veterans Day by honoring all those who have served in the United States Armed Forces.
The School of Government is excited to welcome Kimalee Dickerson into its faculty as the newest member of the management, administration, and leadership division.
Longtime School faculty member takes the helm in fall 2021 as the first woman to lead the program.
The UNC MPA program is pleased to announce that Willow Jacobson, School faculty member and Robert W. Bradshaw Jr. Distinguished Professor of Public Administration and Government, is the next director of the UNC MPA program. Her term commenced September 1, 2021.
Jacobson currently directs the LGFCU Fellows program, which she helped create in 2011 and which focuses on developing local government leaders in North Carolina. She earned a Ph.D. in public administration from Syracuse University and her research has appeared in a range of journals, including Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and Review of Public Administration. Learn more about Jacobson and her goals for the program below.
This story was featured in the Summer 2021 issue of IMPACT and authored by Kathryn Paquet (MPA '21), a publication of the UNC MPA program at the School of Government. Click here for all previous issues.
When Josh Edwards ’05 enrolled at Wake Forest University as an undergraduate student in 2000, he thought he was destined for law school. While completing the required reading for his state government course, however, a name in his textbook changed everything.
“My state government textbook included a chapter about local government that the professor spent little time covering, but it caught my interest,” Edwards said. “As I read through it and followed up on the footnotes, I noted the lion’s share were attributed to a David N. Ammons. I spent time learning about Dr. David Ammons and his countless articles on local government performance management, and it brought to light a career I had never been aware of. When I applied to UNC, it was top of my list because of him.”
The School of Government is excited to welcome Teshanee Williams into its faculty ranks as an assistant professor of public administration and government. Williams originally joined the School in 2019 as a Carolina Postdoctoral Program Faculty Diversity Fellow, researching strategies to manage effective, efficient, and equitable policy outcomes through the public sector and nonprofit partnerships. In her new role, Williams will continue to specialize in the field of nonprofit management and lead the School in researching and advising on effective management, leadership, and governance of nonprofit organizations in collaboration with local governments.
For Williams, the drive to work in public service—specifically in the field of nonprofits—was borne of a desire to help not just individuals but whole communities create lasting change. After the completion of her undergraduate degree in psychology, Williams contemplated pursuing a career in mental health but realized a broader lens would allow her to contend with the sweeping, structural issues she sought to address.
“There are problems that are bigger than one patient,” Williams said. “It was at that point that I realized that I wanted to focus on research that identifies solutions to systemic issues that affect individual people in their day to day lives.”