Category: Interests

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This Week’s Pet Projects

I have often heard local government employees explain that they love their jobs because each day brings new challenges and opportunities. The same has been true in my PWE. Last week, the town manager sent me an unexpected and fun assignment. I planned to start this week continuing my research on local ordinances but instead had the opportunity to write a report for the town’s planned upcoming dog park. Prior to this week, I knew nothing about dog parks, so I really enjoyed researching the topic and writing the report. Did you know the top citizen priorities for dog parks are typically cleanliness, shade, and water? I discovered best practices related to everything from amenities to location to surface materials!

Through my PWE, I am learning more about the range of responsibilities local government employees tackle every day. In Canton, that means completing tasks like delivering recycling bins, meeting with local business leaders, and planning events. As I mentioned previously, I have no local government experience. Completing my internship in a small town with a limited number of staff provides me with the opportunity to gain a broad perspective of duties and expectations required of town employees. While functioning with a smaller staff can be challenging, it also means that town employees develop a diverse skill set. The dog park is part of a larger parks and recreation improvement project, and I’m excited to see the transformation. As I continue in my PWE, I look forward to sharing with you the details of other assignments that come my way. With multiple projects planned, it’s an exciting time to be working with the Town of Canton!

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Professional Work Experience in Papertown

On Monday, I began my PWE in the office of the town manager in Canton, North Carolina. Canton is located in Haywood County just twenty miles outside of Asheville. Surrounded by the Appalachian Mountains. Canton attracts adventure seekers who enjoy hiking the surrounding trails that include popular landmarks like Cold Mountain, floating down the Pigeon River that runs through town, or visiting downtown businesses that feature delicious southern food and locally made goods. In the center of town sits a large papermill that manufactures Starbucks coffee cups, juice cartons, and other paper products. Due to the central location and large size of the mill, the locals affectionately refer to Canton as “Papertown.”

Continue reading “Professional Work Experience in Papertown”

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Navigating Competing Values in Public Service

Given the recent challenges across the United States with confederate statues, building names, and town names, public service leaders are charged with listening and navigating highly emotional and challenging spaces to best serve the public. In Chapel Hill, there were challenges with Silent Sam on campus. Silent Sam is a confederate statue that once stood on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus in the upper quad (McCorkle Place). It was granted to the University in 1913 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In recent years, there has been growing controversy over the existence and placement of the statue on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus. After years of debate and days of protest, Silent Sam was torn down the day right before the first day of classes in August 2018. (To learn more about Silent Sam’s History, click here).

However, these challenges reach farther than UNC-Chapel Hill and its surrounding towns. Currently, I work for Chatham County Manager’s Office and we are navigating the removal of a Confederate statue at our Historic Courthouse in Pittsboro, NC. Chatham is a neighboring county to Orange County (where Chapel Hill and Carrboro are located). Since March of 2019, there has been a large push to remove the Confederate Statue placed at the Courthouse in the Town’s center. (To learn more about the contention in Chatham around the monument, click here). The list of places working through these types of challenges does not end here. Given the current times, these are some of the challenges that public service leaders are continuing to face. 

To support future public service leaders and current practitioners, the MPA Diversity Committee hosted a breakfast panel about managing conflict and promoting inclusion in difficult political climates on 11/6/19. The Committee brought three panelists that represented the city, county, and non-profit contexts of public service.

picture of panelist, Beverly Scurry, Maurice Jones, and Chanel Nestor
From left to right, Maggie Bailey (moderator), Beverly Scurry, Maurice Jones, and Chanel Nestor.

For the city context, the Diversity Committee invited Maurice Jones who is the current Town Manager of Chapel Hill and served as the previous Town Manager of Charlottesville during the Unite the Right rally. Beverly Scurry represented the county context by speaking about her experience as the Orange County Board of Health Strategic Plan Manager and community organizer in Alamance County. For the non-profit sector, the Committee invited Chanel Nestor who serves as an Adjunct Lecturer of Rural Sociology at NC A&T and Farmers’ Market Coordinator of the Authentically Alamance Farmers’ Market Network in Alamance County. Chanel was able to speak not only about the non-profit context, but also the rural context. 

The panel served as a great opportunity to learn about implementing inclusive measures and goals into strategic planning, balancing competing values, and equity implementation in rural versus urban settings. Each member of the panel brought a unique perspective from their personal and professional experiences of navigating difficult political climates through managing conflict and continuing to promote inclusion. The panelists’ different specialties demonstrated the true intersectionality and opportunity for inclusion in public service.

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HIGHLIGHT: Town of Chapel Hill Emergency Communications

sunset image of Chapel Hill's downtown Franklin Street
Downtown Chapel Hill – Franklin Street

Today is October 21, 2019 – this puts us 3/4ths of the way through hurricane season. 

Chapel Hill, even though it is pretty inland, has been hit by hurricanes in the past. Just last year, Hurricane Florence hit Chapel Hill bringing more than nine inches of rain over four days. 

Weather emergencies pose a unique challenge to local government leaders (often MPA graduates). In times of emergencies, local governments benefit from having an infrastructure to be able to communicate to residents during times of high need. This information includes providing evacuation routes, shelter locations, and weather updates. 

DID YOU KNOW…

That the Town of Chapel Hill won an Award of Excellence for Hurricane Florence Communication. The Town was awarded this recognition by the City-County Communications & Marketing Association (3CMA) last month.

We are so proud to be apart of the Chapel Hill community. It’s also good to know that our local government works hard to serve us well in our times of highest need! 

See original article here. 

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MPA-ers doing cool, not government things!

When most people think MPA at UNC-Chapel Hill, they think local government. Rightfully so, we are ranked #2 in the nation for the local government area of study. However, that is not where our knowledge stops.

Like I mentioned a few blog posts ago, the MPA program has many different concentrations (see here). One of our concentrations is non-profit management. We offer courses such as Financial Management of Nonprofit Organizations and Grant Writing and Evaluation.

Click here to see a full list of the courses for our nonprofit management concentration.

Want to know some of the cool, not local government things our alumni are doing?

Check out Wad Khalafalla, a 2018 MPA graduate with a nonprofit management concentration. Currently, she serves as the Deputy Director of Spread the Vote in Virginia! This year, Wad was awarded the Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to teach English in Malaysia. We are super excited to see where life takes you, Wad!

To learn more about Wad’s award, click here.

Check out Ashley Kazouh, a 2019 MPA graduate with a nonprofit management concentration. She currently works as a policy analyst for the Public School Forum. Ashley supports the policy team by monitoring, documenting, and providing analysis of current education policy issues in North Carolina. Talk about impact!

To learn more about Ashley’s role, click here.

Check out Ebony West, another 2018 MPA graduate, who now works at the Triangle Community Foundation as the Programs and Engagement Associate. In her role, Ebony establishes and strengthens relationships with nonprofit organizations and other partners in the region. She provides the Foundation with the community and nonprofit research about systemic inequities. Amazing!

To learn more about Ebony’s role, click here.

These are only some of the options that MPA graduates have. Cara and I are always working to strengthen our relationships with nonprofits so that we can support our students! So much so that yesterday, I went to the Orange County Third Sector Alliance Nonprofit Fair.  It was an awesome opportunity to network and connect with nonprofits like the Compass Center for Women and Families, Wonder Connection, the Dispute Settlement Center, and Grow Your World. Needless to say, they were excited to know that MPA-ers are interested in nonprofit work as well!

See you next time!

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These are a few of my favorite things…

Welcome back!!!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am taking on a new role this year! I will be working with our very own Director of Admissions, Cara Robinson. This year, I will serve as the Admissions Research Assistant. This means that I get to post a lot more here and do other fun things to support the School of Government and the MPA program! I am really excited to continue sharing my experiences with you!

So for this blog post, I wanted to talk about some of my favorite things about an MPA degree (more specifically at UNC).

Our MPA program is awesome (which you will probably hear me say a lot!). Three of my favorite things about this program are the concentration options, opportunities for connections with Alumni, and the flexibility of how our degrees can serve us after graduation.

1. CONCENTRATIONS

The MPA degree is a generalist degree, so I love that we have the opportunity to pick a more focused track for our educational career through concentrations. For on-campus students, the MPA program offers a concentration in local government, nonprofit management, public management, and community and economic development. For online students, the program offers concentrations for local government, nonprofit management, public management, international relations, and public health! They require that the student take a certain number of credit hours of electives related to the concentration. Once you have completed the requirements and receive your degree, then you are awarded a certificate at graduation. Concentrations allow us to do a deeper dive into a specialist frame of thought.

See: https://mpa.unc.edu/concentrations-dual-degrees

2. CONNECTIONS

UNC-Chapel Hill is a well-known hub for MPA knowledge. The school has tons of connections! If you are interested in a specific type of work, there is someone on staff that knows someone who does that work. The staff is amazing at connecting students with alumni from the program with similar interests and career paths. The program also offers an alumni mentor program where new students are paired with alumni that have similar career goals/paths. Lastly, we have a staff person that can support our career goals. Allison Binkley is the Associate Director of Career Services. She does a lot of behind the scenes work to ensure that we can make the right connections to get on the right career path! Overall, I feel like this program works really hard to support students’ career goals through faculty and staff knowledge, alumni programming, and career support.

See: https://mpa.unc.edu/alumni

3. FLEXIBILITY:

As I mentioned before, the MPA degree is pretty generalist. For me, that was a top-selling point! In true millennial fashion, purpose and flexibility are important to me when I think about my future working career. One of the things that I love about an MPA degree is that you can do many, many things. This degree sets you up to be a leader in various sectors. For example, you could be a grants manager, legislative analyst, public affairs director, community engagement manager, healthcare policy analyst, county/city manager, urban planning, consultant, or a foundation president. The career opportunities for leaders are endless!

See: https://mpa.unc.edu/mission

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my post! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

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Helloooo from Pittsboro (aka Circle City)!

Hey everyone!

Welcome to my blog post! My name is Courtney Cooper-Lewter. I am a dual-degree student with the Public Administration and Social Work programs. I just finished my first year of the MPA program, but technically this is year two of graduate school. Two down, one to go! More than anything, I am really excited for my professional work experience this summer with Chatham County!

picture of Historic Chatham County Court House
Historic Chatham County Court House, the County Manager’s Office is behind this building

This summer, I will be serving as an intern in the Chatham County Manager’s Office in Pittsboro, NC. I will be working on helping the County create a community-led Human Relations collaborative to address some of the economic and racial inequities in the County by:

  1. Researching and identifying effective tools for outreach and engagement of the community around social justice
  2. Studying existing effective collaborative efforts around social justice
  3. Interviewing community leaders to assess what they view as important for the collaborative to be successful
  4. Developing recommendations for the collaborative to move forward

So far, everything has started off great! Everyone is so supportive! And I realize, I am pretty spoiled with my office space. I have my own office and a window (see below)! I have already interviewed quite a few community leaders and feel like I am getting a better understanding of the community dynamics.

I can’t wait to continue exploring Chatham County. For now, check out this beautiful video of Pittsboro and maybe you will notice why it is called Circle City.

I look forward to talking with you more next week about what I am learning! See you then.

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Alumni Spotlight – Stephanie Watkins-Cruz ‘18

From time to time, we will be featuring alumni and students in our program.  Mostly so you can hear about what people do with an MPA and what gets them ticking with regards to public service and public administration.  Here is our first!

“Public service is a great way to extend the reach of those fighting for their communities, homes, and livelihood”

Stephanie came into the program passionate about public service and specifically affordable housing and housing insecurities.  “Housing is more than a roof and four walls,” she said. “It involves your surroundings, the health of your environment, and what you have and don’t have access to. At home is where your identity takes root.”

Continue reading “Alumni Spotlight – Stephanie Watkins-Cruz ‘18”

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Welcome!

MPA Matters seeks to explore and explain all the current happenings and pursuits of those interested in public administration and public service. Special focus will be put on highlighting careers in public administration and the current initiatives of the MPA at UNC program including our faculty, current students, and alumni.