This weekend, I had the pleasure of traveling to our nation’s capital city for a few days. While in Washington D.C., I toured the monuments honoring historical figures and events and gazed at the many important buildings that offer space for decision-makers.
The most impactful moment of the trip was paying my respects to the former Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her casket was on display for public viewing on the steps of the Supreme Court building. The line to walk up the steps for a closer viewing weaved back and forth along First Street for a few blocks.
Across the street from the Supreme Court building, many individuals left flowers, gifts, notes, and signs expressing their gratitude for her legacy and the difference she made in their life. While the emotions of the environment still had an element of sorrow, reading the notes and experiencing the incredible outpour of love left me with hope.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg dedicated her life to public service. She was motivated by her passion of fighting and protecting the rights of the most vulnerable. In our MPA classes, we discuss the power of public service motivation. RBG’s life and legacy is a testament to that power.
Our 1st year residential students gather for a socially distanced orientation.
Hi again,
With the beginning of a new academic year comes new experiences and people. This is particularly true for the MPA program’s first-year ‘residential’ students (residential being in quotation marks due to the ongoing pandemic which is keeping us from being truly in-person), which is why I wanted to take some time to introduce you to this cohort.
The incoming class is one of the largest and most diverse that the residential program has welcomed in years, with 28 students joining UNC’s MPA network exemplifying various academic backgrounds and career interests. The cohort is representing 18 different undergraduate institutions including, UNC-Asheville, N.C. State University, Vanderbilt, Clemson, University of Kansas, and others. To accompany these undergraduate institutions, these individuals are bringing a wide variety of academic backgrounds to the classroom with undergraduate degrees in Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, Sport and Entertainment Management, Civil Engineering, Physics, Philosophy, and more.
While there is a large number of students joining the program from various undergraduate universities, another interesting characteristic of this class is that it contains our largest number of graduates from UNC-Chapel Hill. We have 9 students who are continuing their time as a Tar Heel in this cohort. Among the nine, 3 students are pursuing the Environmental dual degree that UNC offers. In looking at North Carolina as a whole, there are 12 additional students continuing their education within the program after receiving their undergraduate degree from an in-state institution.
Along with the rich amount of in-state representation in this cohort, there is significant number of students welcomed to the program from outside of North Carolina. Roughly a third of this cohort consists of out-of-state students. These individuals are bringing their passions from states such as Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia.
While this semester looks a little different due to COVID-19, we are so proud of how well the first-year students are transitioning into this virtual learning environment. With most of the students averaging over three years of professional experience already, the passion and motivation for public service is tangible among this cohort. We are very happy to have these students providing insight from their experiences to make this program more enriching.
On behalf of the MPA Class of 2021, I would like to officially welcome each student of the first-year cohort to Carolina MPA. We are looking forward to providing support and getting to know each of you as we continue this year together! Remember that you have a purpose for being in this program, so let your values and passions guide you and you will make an impact!
My name is Clay Fleming and I am a second-year student in the residential MPA program here at the UNC School of Government. As we continue these blogs, I hope to provide a closer look at the student experience within the program, as well as offer some insight into the incredible work others with a MPA degree are accomplishing in their communities. In my first blog, I am going to share a little about myself and the path I took to arrive here at UNC.
My journey to the MPA program was different but not too out of the ordinary. While pursuing my bachelor’s degree at Appalachian State University, I was heavily involved in a community service organization called Appalachian & the Community Together (ACT). In this organization, I helped provide community volunteer opportunities to students at Appalachian State as well as lead service trips to different communities across the country. Through my involvement, I began to realize I have a passion for serving communities.
This realization was made even clearer during my senior year, when I had the opportunity to lead a community service trip to San Francisco. The group I was leading worked with three non-profits in the Bay Area, all of which discussed working with local government to create ordinances that were mutually beneficial for the non-profit and San Francisco residents. Through witnessing the direct impact these partnerships had on the community, I realized I wanted this to be my career. The next day, I found UNC’s MPA website, read about the program’s focus on both non-profits and local government and I was sold!
Once I started the residential program last fall, I began to see all of the different avenues this degree could take me. Prior to starting the MPA degree, I never gave much thought to working in local government as a career, as I was set on working for a non-profit. However, with local government being the strong point of the program, my interests were ignited. Over the summer, I had my first authentic exposure to life working in a municipality through my Professional Work Experience (PWE) with the Town of Holly Springs. While interning there, it was incredible to see the inner workings of the government body to support residents, especially during COVID-19.
Ultimately with my MPA degree, I hope to create positive social change in the world that includes an emphasis on social equity. Whether my career leads me to local government or the non-profit sphere, I want to continue my passion for strengthening communities and serving people. I am very thankful for the opportunity to pursue this career and the support this program offers to me and my peers. I look forward to regularly updating you on various topics and happenings within public administration.
On Day 1, the public forum, things went forward nearly seamlessly in our virtual environment. SOG faculty and staff presented on collective impact, summarized two-year project, and facilitated excellent break-out sessions with team members who had expertise on topics like transportation, housing, and employment and recovery courts. There were some hiccups with the keynote speaker, Sam Quinones, the author of the highly acclaimed book Dreamland. As a journalist, he had a specific perspective of the opioid crisis, which did not always mesh with the experience and expertise of these community teams. For example, he spent over five minutes talking about how the word “addict” should be used to describe people who use drugs or who have Substance Use Disorder (SUD), despite the fact that community members in the chat attested that it was stigmatizing language. Despite these issues, the first day was a great spotlight of the project as a whole.
The second day of the forum was a teams-only event, summarizing the results of their efforts in 5-minute presentations, as well as workshops to focus on their sustainability and further work moving forward. Although there were some minor technical problems with showing some of the first presentations, these were ironed out as the day went on. Teams praised each other’s accomplishments and videos, which allowed them to make even more connections among communities using similar strategies. The teams were also able to use breakout rooms to discuss public values, collective impact, sustainability, and more, and then debrief with SOG faculty as facilitators. It was not the ending that partners may have wanted; their work, and the forum itself, were greatly complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it seemed like a fitting celebration of the teams themselves, one of the ways that ncIMPACT is managing the end of such a momentous and publicly-involved project.
As my PWE enters its final few weeks, I have been working on finishing several long-term projects, including the presentations for the Opioid Response Project that I spoke about last week. My other major product for that project has been the Online Resource Library that will be put up on its current microsite, and eventually the permanent website that will launch sometime in late fall or early winter. This library contains well over a hundred resources, in ten different subject areas compiled over the course of the two-year project by multiple participants, including past research assistants. Its purpose is to codify the resources created and shared by our community teams, as well as ones that would assist communities in undertaking a collective impact-style response to the opioid crisis. Although there is a guidebook in production that specifically focuses on the implementation of a collective impact project, these resources are substance use-specific, and can assist organizations who are in any stage of addressing opioids in their communities.
While working on this product, there have been many thumbs in this metaphorical pie. Since this project involved many staff and faculty members from across the SOG, it has a series of subcommittees, including one for the website. But because the project is being managed through ncIMPACT, there is an input and review process there as well. This means that I have had to manage the expectations and ideas of many individuals as I create this product, including people who have not had the chance to see the library or been involved in its compilation. Although this has at times made creating this resource more difficult, it has also raised useful questions about its purpose, format, and realistic usefulness in the wider community. For example, these conversations led to the decision to add a brief context statement to each resource and category, so that users do not have to actually click on or read the resource in order to see if it is useful to them. This made the library a much more time-intensive product for me, but will also make it much more helpful to the public audience it is meant to serve.
Creating products for a general audience is something that I have learned much more about during this PWE experience. I have been involved in academia for almost seven years now, and see it as my future career. My perspective, writing, and priorities often reflect that bias. Although I realize the importance of public-focused work, I have traditionally felt uncomfortable creating resources for this audience. How was I supposed to know what people wanted or needed? How was I, with an outsider’s perspective, going to be able to create something that would assist communities in a real, tangible way? Working with ncIMPACT has given me a much more nuanced perspective of making research and project results accessible to those who they affect most. I still know that I have an outsider’s perspective, but now I am able to speak with professionals and clients to understand how resources like this one can best support them. I am also more able to put myself into the shoes of others, and think critically about how to most efficiently communicate this information to a non-academic audience. Being able to learn more about the crossroads of policy, research, practitioners, and communities is helping me grow as a professional, and put the “social” in social worker and the “public” in public administrator.
In theory, helping the teams create a 5-minute, multimedia presentation would have been fairly easy before COVID. They likely would have visited Chapel Hill during the summer for meetings, and I could have set them up for audio or video recording with professional equipment at the SOG. Worst case scenario, I may have had to make a road trip to the communities in order to co-create the presentations. However, COVID-19 has made client relationships much more complicated, especially in communities that may lack strong broadband access or public health infrastructure. Many of the individuals and organizations in the ORP are doing double duty as COVID-19 contact tracers, care providers, or policymakers. They are often extremely busy, even overwhelmed, with pandemic-related work, which makes finding time to meet difficult.
Additionally, travel restrictions and bans on in-person meetings have made all of our work on the presentations virtual. Instead of a day’s worth of recording, I have to schedule weeks of time in which I provide drafts to project managers and teams, they record audio, and I put the final products together. This has made working with clients much more difficult than it likely would have been without the influence of coronavirus. However, the teams have also expressed their gratitude for my help during this time, as they are overworked and already coping with drastic changes to in-person programs and services, including drug courts, syringe exchanges, and medical care and counseling. Although the pandemic might have made it more complicated and time-consuming, it has also taught me how to work with diverse clients virtually, and has thereby been a valuable professional experience both now and in the future.
Writing this blog has been difficult this week, as our country cries out in pain and anger and demands change of our institutions. The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police in Minneapolis and Louisville have inspired global protests, including in all 50 US states. There are hundreds of thousands of people demanding justice in cities all over the country, including Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Greensboro, Fayetteville, Wilmington, and more in North Carolina alone. All of this is, of course, in the context of the systemic racism experienced by people of color – violence from police, but also disparities in every major health and wellbeing indicator, the trauma and chronic stress of interpersonal and institutional racism, and the reality that to many Americans, their lives matter less than their white counterparts. And I want to make it clear: Black Lives Matter, and it’s our responsibility as individuals and professionals to change the systems we work in to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive.
Working for a governmental organization is hard right now, as someone whose partner, best friend, and colleagues are Black. I recognize the complicity of all of our governmental institutions in racism, simply because of our nation’s history as one built on genocide and slavery. And I honestly didn’t know what to write about for MPA Matters that would not seem either tone deaf or overly political. I was worried not only that my words would not be sufficient, but also that they may not be appropriate for this platform. However, I argue that as we MPA students work in our PWEs this summer, that it is our duty to not only observe government’s functions and build our own skills, but also challenge the assumptions on which these organizations rest.
That challenge may not be the same for everyone; as an employee of the School of Government, my work must remain understandably policy neutral in order to engage elected officials and administrators from all corners of our state. And ncIMPACT’s work, including all of the projects on which I am working, are focused on making the lives of vulnerable populations, including Black North Carolinians, better, safer, and more prosperous. I can take some comfort in the fact that my efforts will effect some change, for individuals and communities if not the systems themselves. However, there is so much more to be done, personally, professionally, and institutionally, to address my and our roles in white supremacy and anti-black violence. My hope is that after the protests are over – when police have put down their tear gas and rubber bullets – that we all maintain the same level of urgency we feel now for change, unity, and the value of Black lives.
Memorial Day weekend was a welcome break from a busy two weeks at my PWE. One of ncIMPACT’s staff members is ill, changing our team’s work flow. Suddenly, an important work product for the social capital project needed support, and it fell on my shoulders to complete a draft of a literature review in just a couple of days. I also picked up other responsibilities on both the social capital and EITC project which required me to attend an additional series of meetings, pulling my time and attention in multiple directions as we worked to complete the review. I felt not only the pressure of deadlines, but also pressure to step up as a new part of a small team and assert myself as an organizational representative.
On Thursday of last week, I was talking to a friend who asked me if I was enjoying my internship. I immediately launched into an explanation of all the Zoom meetings I had, the deadlines I was up against, and the stress I was feeling because of it all. I waxed poetic about the additional stress of COVID-19, and how I hadn’t even had the chance to meet my coworkers because of it. After letting me vent, he said, “Okay, but are you enjoying it?” I paused for the first time in several days to actually think about that question. Sure, I was busy and maybe even a little overwhelmed by trying to adapt to my new role in the team so quickly. But did that mean that I wasn’t enjoying my time with ncIMPACT? Did it mean that maybe I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time?
Despite the stress of last week, reflecting on my experience allowed me to realize that this is exactly where I want to be right now, COVID aside. My supervisor and field instructor supported me both personally and professionally, including letting me flex my hours to work longer on some days so I could leave early Friday for a weekend away. Anita, ncIMPACT’s director, trusted me enough to let me attend an outward-facing meeting with clients as the only ncIMPACT representative because of my performance in earlier project meetings. And research partners valued my input during our interactions that they were responsive to a proposal I made to potentially augment a study design to collect key informant data, since COVID was affecting our ability to collect it from community members in a timely fashion.
Having more on my plate can be, rightfully, a source of worry. However, it really means that I am being allowed to dig in to the content and management of projects, meaningfully contribute to work, and grow as a social worker and public administrator. Being a part of a team that is as invested in my development as they are the outcomes of my work has been invigorating and encouraging. I can’t wait to see what else I’ll get to sink my teeth into this summer.
ncIMPACT Initiative is an applied public policy team that works with public officials to develop collaborative solutions to North Carolina’s wicked problems. They use an interdisciplinary approach, data driven high-quality analysis, and innovative practices to implement, evaluate, and publicize these solutions while remaining politically and policy neutral.
This is where I’ll be doing my Professional Work Experience. My introduction with ncIMPACT is a Zoom call with my new supervisor, Emily, on Monday at 9 AM. It’s the second to last day of exams and I’m still turning in a final tonight, but my MSW-MPA requirements mean I’m working 600 hours this summer; there’s no time to take a week or two and recuperate. The whirlwind of getting onboarded to a new organization coincides with the relief of finishing off an unusual and difficult semester, thanks to the coronavirus.
COVID-19 has blurred the lines between work and life so thoroughly that transitioning from academia to work is almost effortless, at least logistically. I’m still working from home, likely through at least the end of May, if not longer. Instead of Zoom classes, it’s Zoom meetings as I get acquainted with ncIMPACT’s work and the projects I’ll be working on this summer. Part of the SOG, ncIMPACT runs applied public policy and research projects all over the state, building collaboratives in order to implement solutions to complex community problems. I’m curious to see how ncIMPACT straddles the academia-practitioner divide, aiming for direct implementation of research rather than the traditional route of academic publishing.
I’ll be working on at least four different projects this summer: their UNC-TV series, the Opioid Response Project, their federally-funded social capital project, and the EITC in NC project. Run by two different project managers, Emily and Brooklyn, these interesting projects will keep me busy as I work with a variety of staff and clients. I’m thrilled to have found an organization that will allow me to stretch both my social work and public administration muscles, doing research, policy, assessments, interventions, and evaluations of communities and systems.
In my first week, I’m already writing blogs for UNC-TV, attending virtual town halls, and getting involved with a literature review process for the social capital project, plus a variety of meetings to learn more about how I will be contributing to each of the four projects this summer. I can’t wait to see what I learn and accomplish as I look towards my final year of grad school. Let’s get started!
ncIMPACT Initiative