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Nonprofit Management & Leadership: Faculty of Practice and Director

The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin seeks a Director of Nonprofit Management and Leadership within the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service. This position will include teaching responsibilities in a faculty of practice title.

The LBJ School seeks a dynamic leader to advance the RGK Center’s mission of fostering research and education in nonprofit management, philanthropy, and social entrepreneurship. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in these areas and a commitment to building a vibrant and diverse global civil society.

By |2024-11-10T10:11:07-05:00November 10th, 2024|Job Posting|

Philanthropy: Faculty of Practice and Director

The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin seeks a Director of Philanthropy within the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service. This position will include teaching responsibilities in a faculty of practice title.

The LBJ School seeks a dynamic leader to advance the RGK Center’s mission of fostering research and education in philanthropy. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in this area and a commitment to building a vibrant and diverse global civil society.

By |2024-11-10T10:09:40-05:00November 10th, 2024|Job Posting|

Greetings from the Executive Director: October 2024

Nicole Collier, NACC Executive Director

Nicole Collier, MPSA
Executive Director, NACC
Center for Nonprofits and Philanthropy
Bush School of Government and Public Service
Texas A&M University

I don’t know about you, but I am so excited for fall to finally arrive!

Of course, by fall, I mean the official season. I’m sure many of us have been caught up in the academic fall semester and all the joys, stresses, and details that come with it. My hope is that, at least here in Texas, all the things that come with the fall semester can be somewhat aided by it not being over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

It has been busy here, so it’s been a bit overwhelming to be perfectly candid and honest with you. Here are a few of the things on my mind related to NACC.

Our annual member meeting is next month in Washington, D.C.! I’m looking forward to seeing you all there, so be sure that if you are a member representative, you’ve signed up to join us! We plan to have many engaging discussions about what is happening in our programs, schools, and communities.

We are wrapping up the fall honor society! Many of you remember Carley, our awesome student worker. They graduated after working with NACC for over 18 months and have begun their job at Boston University. I won’t lie, though; I’m selfishly missing their assistance with balancing all that’s going on with the honor society. On a more positive note, we have an awesome new student worker starting in the next few weeks that I can’t wait to introduce to you!

Finally, I’m thinking about our July conference at the University of Maryland! Our committee has been meeting and working on the core themes of our conference. Soon we will be putting out our call for presentations, so be sure to keep an eye out and let us know if you have a session or presenter in mind!

While this isn’t close to all that’s going on with NACC, they are currently running around in my mind as the big three things. There’s lots to look forward to, and it’s so easy to get caught up in the stress of all the details that I have to take a second to step back and think about all that I’m grateful for in this community. Our community is the core of what makes NACC….well, NACC, and I’m so glad to have been part of it for over 5 years!

Take care of yourselves. Take some deep breaths. We’ve got this.

Nicole

By |2024-10-22T09:28:01-04:00October 22nd, 2024|Executive Director's Report|

Handbook of Critical Perspectives on Nonprofit Organizing and Voluntary Action

Roseanne M. Mirabella, PhD

Roseanne M. Mirabella, PhD
Associate Professor
College of Business and Public Management
Kean University

Angela M. Eikenberry

Angela M. Eikenberry, PhD
Professor and School Director
School of Public Policy
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
University of Connecticut

Angela R. Logan, PhD

Angela R. Logan, PhD
NACC President
St. Andre Bessette Academic Director
Master of Nonprofit Administration
Associate Teaching Professor
Mendoza College of Business
University of Notre Dame

Heather Carpenter, PhD

Heather Carpenter, PhD
Executive Director
Institute for Nonprofit Administration & Research

Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences
Louisiana State University Shreveport

Elizabeth J. Dale, PhD

Elizabeth J. Dale, PhD
Director and Associate Professor
Nonprofit Leadership
Seattle University

Kate Prendella

Katherine Prendella
Doctoral Student
School of Communication and Information
Rutgers-New Brunswick

Handbook of Critical Perspectives on Nonprofit Organizing and Voluntary Action: Concepts, Applications, and Future Directions
Eds. Roseanne M. Mirabella (Kean University, US), Tracey M. Coule (Sheffield Hallam University, UK), and Angela M. Eikenberry (University of Connecticut, US)
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024

In August 2024, Edward Elgar Publishing released the Handbook of Critical Perspectives on Nonprofit Organizing and Voluntary Action, edited by Roseanne M. Mirabella (Kean University) and Angela M. Eikenberry (University of  Connecticut), alongside numerous contributors, including NACC member representatives Angela R. Logan (NACC President), Heather Carpenter, and Elizabeth J. Dale. (For a full list of editors and contributors, click here).

This insightful Handbook brings together leading and emerging scholars within the field of nonprofit organization, serving as a call to action for academics to interrogate key contemporary issues such as backsliding and authoritarianism. It meticulously distinguishes traditional, often marginalist perspectives from nuanced counterarguments to balance out the field.

The Handbook of Critical Perspectives on Nonprofit Organizing and Voluntary Action illustrates opportunities and challenges for future researchers within the sector and presses the reader to imagine a better, more equitable future. Chapters employ a variety of vital theoretical lenses, for example utilizing postcolonial theory, critical feminist theory, queer theory, critical disability theory and post-structural theory. They provide a timely, inter-contextual narration of the many roles enacted by nonprofit and voluntary organizations today.

Approaching nonprofit organizing as an ever-expanding topic, this crucial Handbook will be an important read for scholars of critical management studies, public administration, and public policy. It will additionally benefit researchers within the philanthropic studies field hoping to gain insight into the future of their discipline.

Below, we feature chapters from the volume authored by some of our NACC member representatives, highlighting their contributions to this publication. We would also like to share that in addition to editing the volume, Dr. Mirabella also co-authored a chapter, “Neocolonialism’s Perpetuation of Institutional Life of Disabled Individuals through the Rhetoric of Philanthropy and Charity,” with her daughter, Katherine Prendella (Doctoral Student, Rutgers-New Brunswick).

The Nature of Critical Global Civil Society Scholarship: Reviewing the State of the Art 1972-2021
Angela M. Eikenberry, Jennifer Dodge, and Tracey M. Coule

This chapter examines global civil society scholarship published in three key field journals—Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, and Voluntas—with particular attention to the most critical work originating from or focusing on countries outside the more commonly studied (“Western,” white) Anglosphere and European context. The 65 articles identified converge around two major areas: problematizing meanings of civil society concepts and practices, and problematizing assumptions about relationships. Within these themes, scholars emphasize the importance of context and political economy; societal transformation and development, democratization, and emancipation; and debates about what is the best way to study civil society in ways that uphold epistemic justice —a global South-informed unified approach, or a more contextualized country or region approach. Finally, it is noted that articles still seemed limited in their use of epistemologies and theories from parts of the world outside of the Anglosphere and Europe.

Decolonizing Nonprofit, NGO, and Development Higher Education: Valuing Indigenous Knowledge in the Majority World
Roseanne M. Mirabella, Heather Carpenter, and Ibrahim Shafau

This chapter challenges the hegemony of the Minority World over higher education institutions (HEIs) in the Minority World and proposes recommendations to decommodify higher education, refocus curricula and pedagogical approaches to challenge global inequities and neocolonial domination, empower communities to resist hegemonic discourses, and remove the veil of cultural blindness. By reviewing the major influences on HEIs generally and the application of these discourses in the case of nonprofit and nongovernmental organization education particularly, the authors highlight the ways in which future nonprofit and nongovernmental organization leaders are steeped in the language of development, development theory, and development studies, further solidifying the grip of the Minority World on the Majority World. They provide alternative structures and processes to challenge and reconfigure Minority World hegemonic practices underscoring the value of alternative frames that prioritize voices, perspectives, and understandings of stakeholders from the Majority World.

The Racialization of Philanthropic and Nonprofit Organizations: A Critical Analysis of White Supremacy and Economic Injustice in the Sector
Angela R. Logan and Maureen Emerson Feit

Philanthropic organizations, and the nonprofits that rely on philanthropic giving, are built upon a vast and persistent racial wealth gap in the United States. In this chapter, the authors call for intentional and sustained attention to intersections of race and class in the dynamics between organized philanthropy and nonprofit organizations. Combining scholarship on elite philanthropy with critical theories of structural racism, they argue that systems of unearned white advantage have simultaneously fueled organized philanthropy and muted the philanthropic contributions of communities of color. They examine how interactions between organized philanthropy and nonprofits facilitate the racialization of these organizations as spaces that center the interests of white donors and encourage the reproduction and reinforcement of racial inequality in core functions of nonprofits. Finally, they consider the implications of the perpetuation of white supremacy in the sector and offer avenues for transformation in policy, research, and practice.

Burn it to the Ground: Queer Theory, (Hetero)normativities, and Binaries in Nonprofit Organizations
Seth J. Meyer, Elizabeth J. Dale, and Kareem K. M. Willis

In this chapter the authors use queer theory, a critical theory that questions heteronormative understandings of society, to challenge normalized definitions and concepts in nonprofit organizations. They advance alternative and arguably more emancipatory interpretations of nonprofit organizations by ‘queering’ some of the traditional binaries that structure how we organize and operate nonprofit organizations and their work. They begin by queering the definition of what constitutes a nonprofit organization and discuss how compulsory heterosexuality manifests in organizations. They critically investigate four binaries, including the relationship between donors and beneficiaries, funders and grantors, employees and clients, and the organization and community, and argue for more fluid, power-sharing relationships. Throughout their analysis, they show how queer theory can be integrated into nonprofit scholarship and generate new questions with which to investigate the nonprofit sector.

Neocolonialism’s Perpetuation of Institutional Life of Disabled Individuals through the Rhetoric of Philanthropy and Charity
Kate Prendella and Roseanne M. Mirabella

This chapter utilizes critical disability theory, voluntourism studies, and neocolonial theory to discuss how the actions of philanthropists and nonprofit organizations from the Minority World have perpetuated the global marginalization and displacement of children, particularly disabled children. Tying the resurgence of orphanages to recolonization, the authors explore the role of these neoliberal institutions as sites of violence towards and control of disabled bodies. They explore the ways in which the charity rhetoric of disability popularized through media intersects with and abets the orphanage industrial complex supported by and dependent upon voluntourism, describing the ways in which the orphan tourism industry depends upon the exploitation of children to fuel its financial needs. Recognizing the toll that this system exacts on children, particularly children with disabilities, they end with a call for recognition and action to challenge and demolish this system of oppression and stigmatization centering the needs of children in this discourse.

Roseanne M. Mirabella, Ph.D. is member of the faculty of the College of Business and Public Management at Kean University. She conducts research on philanthropy and nonprofit and nongovernmental education and critical perspectives on nonprofit organizing. She has authored or co-authored many papers on nonprofit and nongovernment organization education and one co-edited book “Reframing Nonprofit Organizations: Democracy, Inclusion and Social Change” exploring the ways in which nonprofit management education programs can prepare students both to lead organizations as well as for their important role as advocates for the communities they serve. She is co-editor of the recently published Handbook of Critical Perspectives on Nonprofit Organizing and Voluntary Action one of the first major surveys of critical scholarship within the field. She is past President of ARNOVA and the New Jersey Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) and is currently a member of the leadership team of the Critical Perspectives Section of ARNOVA.

Dr. Angela M. Eikenberry is Professor and Director in the School of Public Policy (SPP) at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on the social, economic and political roles of philanthropy, voluntary associations, and nonprofit organizations in democratic governance. Empirical and theoretical areas of research include giving circles and collaborative giving, marketization of nonprofit organizations and philanthropy, social enterprise, democracy and social equity/justice areas related to nonprofits/philanthropy, and critical social theories.

Dr. Eikenberry’s work appears in dozens of peer-reviewed books, journal articles and book chapters and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and The Takeaway, and in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Her book, Giving Circles: Philanthropy, Voluntary Association, Democracy won CASE’s John Grenzebach Research Award for Outstanding Research in Philanthropy. She also received a Fulbright Scholar Award to conduct research on giving circles in the UK, the University of Nebraska at Omaha campus-wide Awards for Distinguished Research or Creative Activity and Outstanding Graduate Mentor, and the 2023 NVSQ Best Paper Award. She is past President of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Before coming to UConn SPP, Dr. Eikenberry was a Professor serving in several leadership positions at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, including as Chair of the School of Public Administration doctoral program and President and Grievance Officer of the UNO AAUP. She also helped found and run the nonprofit organization, Mode Shift Omaha.

Angela R. Logan, Ph.D. is an Associate Teaching Professor and the St. Andre Bessette Academic Director of the Master of Nonprofit Administration in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. In her role as Academic Director, she provides leadership to the team that oversees both formats of the Master of Nonprofit Administration degree, and as a member of the College’s Department of Management and Organization, she teaches core courses for both programs as well. Professor Logan’s honors and distinctions include the inaugural Notre Dame Faculty Black Excellence Award (2023) and the MNAR Outstanding Professor Award (2023). Prior to joining the College in 2013, Angela has over 25 years of experience in higher education and philanthropy, with a particular focus in the areas of education and diversity. Over the course of her career, she has served as the Program Officer for Education at The Harvest Foundation (Martinsville, VA), the Director of the Bonner Scholars Program at Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH), and the Director of Multicultural Affairs and the Admissions Counselor / Coordinator of Multicultural Admissions at Defiance College (Defiance, OH). Her research focuses on the intersection of gender, race, faith, and nonprofit and philanthropic leadership.

Dr. Heather Carpenter is a highly networked nonprofit professor, researcher, consultant, and trainer passionate about nonprofit capacity building and talent development. She has served as a nonprofit professor and academic program director for over ten years and a nonprofit leader for over 20 years. She serves as Executive Director of the Institute for Nonprofit Administration and Research at LSU Shreveport. INAR’s mission is to conduct research and disseminate knowledge about nonprofit organizations. It has three programmatic areas: academics, professional development, and research.

She has published numerous academic journal articles and books. She previously served as co-editor and chief of the Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership was on the board of the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council the national accrediting body for nonprofit academic degree programs from 2017-2023. In 2022, the Nonprofit Times selected Dr. Carpenter as a Top 50 Power and Influence Nonprofit Leader.

Dr. Carpenter is a lifetime member of Girl Scouts, active in the Downtown Shreveport Rotary Club, and serves on the advisory committee for the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce Leadership Program. She was recently named to the Volunteer Louisiana Commission by the Governor, the state service commission that has a mission to “Strength Louisiana communities through volunteerism and national service.” Her husband is a Navy Veteran and Captain at Spirit Airlines, and they have a 13-year-old daughter.

She earned her Ph.D. in Leadership Studies with an emphasis on Nonprofit and Philanthropic Leadership from the University of San Diego and a Master of Management in Nonprofit Administration from North Park University in Chicago, Illinois.

Elizabeth J. Dale, Ph.D. is program director and associate professor in Nonprofit Leadership at Seattle University. A former development director and Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), her research interests include social justice philanthropy, giving among women and LGBTQ+ donors, and the intersection of gender and philanthropy. She has presented her research nationally and internationally and has provided commentary for The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and The Guardian. She completed her Ph.D. in Philanthropic Studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and women’s and gender studies from Ohio Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in women’s studies from The Ohio State University.

By |2024-10-17T09:58:32-04:00October 10th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Nice Data, Now Show Me the Human Story Behind These Numbers!

Reynold V. Galope, PhD, MPP

Reynold V. Galope, PhD, MPP
2023-2024 American Evaluation Association (AEA) MSI Fellow
Associate Professor of Public and Nonprofit Administration
MPNA/MPA/MNLM Graduate Program Director
College of Community Studies and Public Affairs
Metropolitan State University

Nice Data, Now Show Me the Human Story Behind These Numbers!
Reynold V. Galope, PhD, MPP
AEA365 blog post, 2024

Can data alone tell the complete story of a program’s impact? In his recent AEA365 blog post, “Nice Data, Now Show Me the Human Story Behind These Numbers!”, Dr. Reynold Galope challenges evaluators to think critically about the relationship between quantitative data and the lived experiences of program participants. He reflects on how his approach to program evaluation has evolved, particularly through his engagement with Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE), where the limitations of numbers are often brought into sharp focus.

Dr. Galope emphasizes that while data such as Average Treatment Effects (ATE) are valuable, they can mask disparities and fail to capture the complex, intersecting identities of program beneficiaries. To truly understand a program’s effectiveness, evaluators must go beyond the numbers and delve into the stories and experiences of the people behind them. This human-centered approach allows for deeper insights into program mechanisms and outcomes, providing a more holistic understanding of how well a program serves diverse communities. Dr. Galope’s blog encourages readers to reconsider traditional methods of evaluation and adopt a more inclusive perspective.

More about the AEA MSI Fellowship

The American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) MSI Fellowship is designed to bring together faculty from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) for professional development, networking, and training in evaluation and research. The program seeks to increase participation from underrepresented groups in the evaluation field, offering participants workshops, webinars, and mentoring to broaden their understanding of evaluation as a profession. Additionally, the fellowship aims to enhance evaluation activities at MSIs, orient students to evaluation careers, and encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration and writing. For more details, visit AEA MSI Fellowship.

More about Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE)

Culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE) requires the integration of diversity, inclusion, and equity in all phases of evaluation. CREE incorporates cultural, structural, and contextual factors (e.g., historical, social, economic, racial, ethnic, gender) using a participatory process that shifts power to individuals most impacted. CREE is not just one method of evaluation, it is an approach that should be infused into all evaluation methodologies. CREE advances equity by informing strategy, program improvement, decision-making, policy formation, and change.

Rey Galope is an Associate Professor in the College of Community Studies and Public Affairs (CCSPA) at Metropolitan State University (Saint Paul, MN), where he teaches program evaluation, policy analysis, economic reasoning, and applied research methods and statistics to public and nonprofit professionals, including data and policy analysts, program evaluators, and social change advocates.

Rey received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from Georgia State University (Andrew Young School of Policy Studies) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (School of Public Policy) as a Fulbright Scholar and his Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore (NUS) as a Temasek Scholar. His graduate training in econometrics and quantitative methods influenced much of his prior program evaluation work. His evaluation of the certification and additionality effects of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, a federal program that co-finances R&D with promising small businesses, used propensity score matching to improve homogeneity between treated and untreated groups, and his most recent work investigating the impact of online teaching on student learning exploited a natural experiment to make the ignorability of treatment assignment assumption more plausible.

By |2024-10-10T16:31:42-04:00October 10th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Why Do Some Academic Articles Receive More Citations from Policy Communities?

Dr. Ji Ma

Dr. Ji Ma
Assistant Professor in Philanthropic and Nonprofit Studies
RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service
LBJ School of Public Affairs
The University of Texas at Austin

Why Do Some Academic Articles Receive More Citations from Policy Communities?
Dr. Ji Ma and Yuan (Daniel) Cheng
Public Administration Review, 2024

In this article, the authors (1) present the landscape of the citations of Public Administration and Policy (PAP) scholarly articles in policy documents and (2) examine influencing factors along three dimensions: collaborative teams, cross-disciplinary interactions, and disruptive paradigms. Using data from the 30 most-cited PAP peer-reviewed journals and 38,062 documents from 1107 policy institutions, they find that 10.1% of all PAP scholarship receives high citations from both academics and policy communities. Collaborative teams, cross-disciplinary interactions, and disruptive paradigms can all increase the citations within policy communities, yet the relationships are not linear. Nonacademic authors can consistently attract more policy citations, whether publishing alone or collaborating with academics. According to the paper’s abstract, an article should ideally cite no more than 13 disciplinary subjects. No significant trade-off between scholarly and policy impact as scholarly citations and the academic reputation of authors often translate into policy citations. These findings offer novel and concrete insights into optimizing academic research for policy impact.

Dr. Ji Ma focuses on the nonprofit sector and data science. He studies why and how social relation matters in social and economic behaviors. His research interests include: impact of social relation on social, political, and economic behaviors; education and knowledge production in nonprofit and philanthropic studies; open data in policy studies; computational social science research methods.

Ji has a Ph.D. in Philanthropic Studies at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, with a Ph.D. minor in Data Science at IU School of Informatics and Computing. Before joining LBJ School, he worked at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard as Research Fellow. Ji has received numerous national and international awards, including Ford Foundation China Fellowship, Emerging Scholar Award from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, and Penn Summer Doctoral Fellows from the University of Pennsylvania. He also has a diverse industrial experience: he was a social entrepreneur, a consultant of business management, and a journalist.

By |2024-10-10T15:16:50-04:00October 10th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Assistant or Associate Professor – Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Specialization

The School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University invites applications for a tenure-track appointment at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, effective 1 July 2025. Through research, teaching, supervision, and service to the university, the community and the profession, the successful candidate will participate in the delivery of the School’s Master of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership at https://carleton.ca/sppa/pnl-program/ and other graduate programs.

Closing date for applications: File review will begin November 30, 2024.

By |2024-10-10T16:34:13-04:00October 9th, 2024|Job Posting|

Core Values in Public Administration and Policy: Three Levels of Evaluation in the Public Sector

Emily Brandt, PhD

Emily Brandt, PhD
Adjunct Professor
The University of Texas at Arlington
Program Manager, Business Development

Center for European Policy Analysis

Core Values in Public Administration and Policy: Three Levels of Evaluation in the Public Sector
Dissertation, Doctor of Philosophy in Public and Urban Administration, Summer 2024

This dissertation is composed of three separate but interrelated papers that examine the role of core values in public administration and public policy and how they show up at the societal, bureaucratic, and individual levels to inform the identification of the use of values, engaging proper awareness of how these values impact public sector actions, and how individuals can engage the right values frameworks in the face of conflict in various public and public service contexts. The first paper takes a societal look at core values via a systemic literature review on American morality policies; policies that inspire great debate not because of their intrinsic value, logically based reasoning, or data-informed decisions, but instead focus on the symbolic messages these policies convey to a polity about what core values are held in higher esteem by a society. The second paper analyzes where bureaucrats believe the locus of ultimate responsibility for change lies after they publicly contest a policy’s enforcement, compliance, or regulation on the grounds of moral and ethical considerations. Finally, the third paper proposes a conceptual definitional framework of morally conscious decision-making; a concept that can be used by individual public administrators to make values-based decisions when facing a dilemma, to ensure moral engagement in public sector work. Together these three papers help illustrate the influence of core values on public policy and administrative issues.

Emily Brandt is an adjunct professor at University of Texas at Arlington and a Program Manager at the Center for European Policy Analysis. She recently completed her doctoral degree in Public Policy and Public Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington, and previously earned her Master’s Degree from the University of North Texas in International Studies. She has spent the past 10 years working at international development nonprofits on programs focused on promoting democracy, human rights, and governance primarily in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Her work has been published in Administration and Society, and she has two forthcoming articles exploring bureaucratic objection in the media and codifying societal values in public policy.

Dissertation Advisors

  • First Advisor: Alejandro Rodriguez, PhD
  • Second Advisor: Emily Nwakpuda, PhD
  • Third Advisor: Karabi Bezboruah, PhD
By |2024-08-26T13:09:56-04:00August 26th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

A Message from Your Board President: August 2024

Angela R. Logan, PhD

Angela R. Logan, PhD
St. Andre Bessette Academic Director
Master of Nonprofit Administration

Associate Teaching Professor
Mendoza College of Business
University of Notre Dame

It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: The Start of a New Academic Year

Hello! As you are settling in to read this, if you’re like me, you are also probably starting to make the mental shift from the slower days of Summer to the accelerated pace of the start of the academic year! I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more quickly Summer seems to fly by. This year was no different: between caregiving, teaching, and professional travel, I barely had a chance to do all the things I encouraged you to do in my June message. And yet, while I bask in the glory that is the Supermoon Blue Moon outside my window, I can’t help but think about the “once in a blue moon” experiences we all get to enjoy…every year!

There’s the moment during New Student Orientation where students come to campus for the first time, full of a mixture of excitement and dread. They may be filled with questions like: “Why did I enroll?” “Will I get a job when this is all over?” “Where do I park?” “Is my Academic Director as cool as everyone told me she is?” Okay, that last one may just be what my students are wondering.

Similarly, as faculty, we, too, are often filled with questions: “Did I upload my syllabi to the online platform?” “Where is my classroom?” “What time does my class start?” “Is this the year I’m going to get ahead on my grading?” Again, that last one is just me! Nevertheless, whether rooted in anxiety, imposter syndrome, or trying to balance professional and personal responsibilities, this time of the year often leads to a wicked bad case of “Academic Year Scaries.”

Whenever I’m plagued with the “Academic Year Scaries,” I engage in one of my love languages, pebbling. Inspired by the behavior of Gentoo penguins, who are known to leave pebbles in their mates’ nests as a sign of affection, the term pebbling is “the act of sending memes, links, and videos.” According to noted psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, Adam Grant, “It signals that you’re thinking of (someone) and want them to share your joy.”

On a recent pebbling binge, I discovered some great advice for how to approach this academic year from Melissa Harris-Perry, Presidential Chair Professor of Politics & International Affairs and head of The Anna Julia Cooper Project at Wake Forest University. I thought I’d wrap this month’s message with excerpts from her Facebook post:

“As faculty members, we labor with challenges too. We are trying to navigate all the complexities of our professional and personal lives and working to be present, prepared, and effective in the classroom and beyond.

Give your students and yourself some grace, some space, some humor, and some second chances.

Try just one thing that is different and see what happens. If you hate it, stop. If it’s a disaster, never use it again. And give your students permission to try something new. See what happens if you reward the effort rather than outcome.

Drink a little more water.

Nap if you can.

Look for the opportunities that imperfection brings.

Try to remember that at times- in moments- if we are lucky, teaching can be really and truly the very best job in the world.

We got this.”

Friends, we got this! Make it a ridiculously amazing academic year!

All the best,

Angela R. Logan
Board President, NACC

By |2024-08-21T15:36:12-04:00August 21st, 2024|President's Message|
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