ASPA -- Final Installment

My last few days in Seattle have been very interesting.


It rained all day Sunday and Monday so my adventures by-walking-aound were curtailed a bit, but I still managed to meander to a couple of interesting places in the downtown area.


I had breakfast at a local restaurant named "Lola." I knew I was in trouble when the only omelet they offered was made with octopus. Nope. Not me. Never. Not for breakfast. LOL Nice place though.


As with most conferences it was both a learning and networking opportunity. I met and had several interesting discussions with academics and practitioners from all over the USA and abroad. I liberally gave out my business cards -- you never know when one of those contacts will turn into an opportunity.


I attended more presentations and went through the exhibit area, which was like a candy story for academics...books, books, books. I even found one that I might utilize in the fall in public policy and requested an inspection copy right there.


I had the opportunity to visit with a young lady, Rebecca, from upstate New York, a graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who wants to continue her education in cyber-crime and crime analysis. So, not being one to miss the opportunity to recruit for our school, I gave her soon-to-be Dr. Chris Copeland's contact email. He is without a doubt one of the most gifted and educated persons I know in this area. He can rock some "white hat" hacker stuff.


I also visited with a student from Bhutan who was looking for an opportunity to pursue his MPA degree. Of course, what I really think he wanted was someone or some institution to sponsor him (meaning pay for his education), but he was motivated and interesting.


As my adventures in Seattle were coming to a close, I still heard some great presentations on trust, trust building, competencies and practical uses derived from earning an MPA, an interesting presentation calling for bringing back the bureaucracy (hiring more people) versus growing government through contracting out (and the concomitant issues with inefficiencies and corruption), reducing turnover in the public sector, impacts from Act 10 in Wisconsin (reducing power of labor unions in the public sector) and evidence-based decision making (in other words -- relying on empirical evidence in public administration).


When it comes to utilizing evidence (research, etc.) in public policy making, I have four comments:
1) much of public policy making is VALUE laden, which means a great deal of decision-making is less about what the evidence suggests and more about decision-makers' wants; 2) most public managers/entities are risk averse (can you imagine a city being willing to replicate the Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment today?); 3) research is NOT usually published in places that practitioners are likely to even see it; and, 4) many practitioners are not able to fully utilize research results because of the way it is reported (read this as language and prose).


My trip home was very uneventful, but it started very early on Tuesday morning, 4:30 a.m. in fact. It makes for a very long day, but it was so worth it. Seattle was a great host city and it is a great place to visit.


I want to thank both Tarleton State University for sponsoring my trip and Dr. Alex del Carmen, the Executive Director of the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Strategic Studies, in fact, my boss for allowing me to attend my very first ASPA annual conference. Thank you, Alex.


My hope is that next year we can take a group of MPA students from our program to the ASPA Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, March 17-21, 2017. Think about submitting a topic for presentation.


Dr. GM Cox
Asst. Professor
Director, MPA Program
Tarleton State University

Seattle -- 3rd Session

My day started much like most other days, well with the exception that it started in Seattle. I had breakfast and read the newspaper at the local Starbucks -- there was literally another Starbucks across the street. Really?

I scoped out the presentations that I wanted to attend on Saturday, Friday evening -- have I ever told you about the 6Ps? It is a rule of life -- most of my former employees and students know it. It means Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. So, I was ready and primed to listen and learn. One of the topics I explored in my dissertation research was Public Service Motivation (PSM) -- the basic premise of this theory is that people who work in the public sector are motivated intrinsically more than someone who would prefer to work in the private sector (extrinsically). So, I attended a presentation on Motivation in the Public Sector. The conversation was excellent and the topics very germane to what motivates people to work for the public.

Then I attended a discussion on CJ in Public Administration -- there were several presentations in this area...all very interesting. The presentation that garnered a great deal of attention and conversation was on immigration issues, especially related to Muslims. The interesting thing about the research is that economic independence -- in other words the ability to make money and thrive in a community (country) -- was found to be most positively correlated to assimilation. Let me just say that the conversation was very energized.

I bumped into one of the most interesting academics I have had the pleasure of knowing, Dr. Jim Alexander, Texas Woman University. He is such a nice man. So, we headed over to the MOHAI (Museum of History and Industry) for the welcoming reception. What a nice place to visit -- full of artifacts related to industrial history.

The day was full of exploration, explanation and education. In other words, enlightening opportunities.

To summarize, I heard presentations relative to GIS, PSM, crisis management,  WEBEoC, 3-strikes punishment processes in Florida, EBOLA crisis in Dallas and immigration assimilation. All from well respected academics and Ph.D. candidates. In totality, a full day.

Tomorrow, I will report on my adventures Sunday. Stay tuned.

Dr. GM Cox
Director, MPA Program and
Asst. Professor
School of Criminology, Criminal Justice
    and Strategic Studies
Tarleton State University

Many things can happen at conferences such as these -- meeting new and interesting people, which I have done. Discussing topics of interests, in many cases topics that few would find interesting enough to discuss, and experiencing the local iterations of life experienced by others in their habitat, which I have also done.

Yesterday, I attended several presentations, a kind of mini-course format, on several topics. First up was a discussion on Youngstown, OH, and efforts to deal with violence. Interesting to say the least -- and yes, this is a PA topic. It is also a criminology and CJ topic. See how this works? Oh, the gist of this presentation was that Youngstown like so many similarly situated cities (rust belt, deindustrialization process, dwindling populations, etc.) has challenges with what I would like to call "reverse spatial mismatch." People have left the urban center, leaving fewer and fewer people to pay taxes, work, and consume. The workers who have now left center-city, living in the marginalized areas, some might say the old-suburbs, commute into to the center city to work. Violence is rampant. What to do? Check out the Youngstown's CIRV program.

Then there was the doctoral candidate studying decentralized vs. centralized policing internationally and whether there is a relationship between these two factors (which has many factors within them) and trust by the community of police. This young student, Grichawat Lowatcharin, created a Police Decentralized Index to evaluate his hypotheses. Great research topic. Not sure of his success, but like Thomas Edison pointed out, "there is success in knowing how not to make a light bulbs."

Another doctoral candidate wanted to test her hypothesis against the model of CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) and crime prevention on campuses. Looks like it will be a very interesting research project.

Of course, I had a brief tit-for-tat with another professor who clearly thinks police -- the institution -- and police officers are to blame for a great many of our problems in America. The rest of the room enjoyed the debate. At some point, I had to allow the final word from the other professor -- for those of you who know me, you know how difficulty that was for me, after all, she was probably an expert. LOL Anyway, several of the attendees shook my hand at the conclusion of the discussion -- not sure why they did that.

One young academic in progress from Washington, D.C. and I had a great conversation about what it is that police officers do that most people do not know about. While a PA doctoral student, she was interested in studying that. I gave her some pointers, etc.

The second session and by far the most interesting was on Virtues Ethics in Public Administration. The co-presenters for the topic were Professor Rebecca Gordon, University of San Francisco and Professor Danny Balfour, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI. So, the presentation started with a test of the two (yes, I said two) attendees -- me and one other lost soul, it seems -- where the question was asked of us -- "What is the purpose of human life?" Now, you all might have simple answers to this questions, but knowing this was a very smart person, I had to come up with some lofty answers  and I did. To my surprise -- I was never very good at philosophy, at least not until I had several adult beverages under my belt...then I am very philosophical. Now, my answers were pretty much right on -- "Be," "Happiness" and...wait for it, "Enlightenment." All seems pretty cool answers and were mostly right on.

Professor Gordon then began a lecture on Aristotle and how he went about answering this question. Finally, we discussed why do governments exists? The answers were not so easy or forthcoming. The take-away is that governments exist to provide an environment where "citizens" can pursue excellence in what they want to do -- within the idea of "community" and what Aristotle called "friendship." By the was, this discussion grew to about 5 people and got very interesting and touched on many  topics, such as Anonymous, ends justifying the means, J. S. Mill (one of my favorites), St. Thomas Aquinas, and Alasdair MacIntyre's book After Virtue. Read it, I plan to.

So, here it is Saturday and I am about to embark on another day of learning and connecting.

I will post more comments soon.

Dr. GM Cox
Assistant Professor
Director, MPA Program
Tarleton State University

Hello from Seattle -- Attending the ASPA Conference

Hello, Texans MPA Nation from the grand city of Seattle, WA. Yours truly attending the annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). I am having breakfast in the iconic, for hash browns if you can believe it, US Courthouse Café. Good food, reasonably priced -- try it if you are ever here. But, I am more than just a pretty face in this city attending just another conference -- I'm a professor representing Tarleton SU and public administration among a host of like minded individuals.

This is the grand prix, if you will, of associations for our discipline, public administration.

But, while I am sitting here enjoying the food and people watching, I ponder what is going on in those peoples' lives that I am a voyeur of?

What I "see" is people walking to someplace from somewhere else. Determined. Oblivious, outwardly so at least, to me and my presence and gaze. I have purpose to my gandering -- wondering really, if those peeps have any idea of the number of people, processes and policies handled by public administrators that were involved in making it possible for their relatively safe saunter?

I am struck by the streets, buildings, signs, street lights, by the police officer that just rolled by on his 3-wheeled Segway, and all the  other activities that created this place for walking, living, working and recreating. The not so invisible hand of public administration was apparent, if not visible now or ever, to anyone who would take the time (but why in the world would they) to see what I was seeing.

These things that make places function -- and repeated hundreds of thousands of times every day all over the world -- and I was awestruck at the impacts that public administration has.

Peeps -- kinship of the public administration world -- you all are very important cogs in the mechanisms of government and governance. You are what makes communities, states, nation-states or city-states exist and function.

If you serve the public, you rock and I thank you for your service.

I will make more posts as I experience the conference.

Stay tuned.

Dr. GM Cox
Asst. Professor
Director, MPA Program
Tarleton State University

With all the "talk" and issues (or lack there of) being run up the presidential primary flag pole, by both parties and candidates, and the relative doomsday predictions coming out of the possible election of either leader, we in the Administrative State, must maintain focus. The function of the public administration is to be the action arm of the legislative and executive branches of government. Ok, so I didn't mention the judicial, but that is another argument for another day.


We must keep our sights on the functions we serve, not the politics, especially partisan politics, of the process of selecting our leaders.


PA is first and foremost about service. Sure, we have to play "politics," but we do not try to direct election outcomes -- we deal and cope with them.


Our jobs are to get the job done regardless who wins an election at the national, state or local level.


The American political system, while one of the youngest major democracies on the planet, is one of the most solid, stable, functional and responsive political and public administrative systems that exists. That is not to say that we will continue down that path, but my money is on the system that was set up and evolved from some very smart people -- those who have come before us in developing the Administrative State (and political systems).


I hope you feel free to join in on the blog discussion. Let those of us who serve and steer, and yes, sometimes row, know what your opinions and inputs are on this topic.


Dr. Cox
Asst. Professor
Director, MPA Program
Tarleton State University


P.S.: By the way, invite people to join our blog and get involved. Our blog is not closed loop -- we want and we encourage everyone to jump in and participate.