News

Students participating in UNC Charlotte’s Model United Nations this fall are finding increased opportunities to compete nationally and internationally, as well as options for volunteering in the local community. They will be participating in three conferences this semester. The first is the 27th Annual Carolinas Conference hosted by our organization at UNC Charlotte, the second […]

UNC Charlotte students are learning research and debate skills through their participation in the North Carolina Student Legislature. Students participate in a model General Assembly and gain valuable insight into how the state engages in policymaking. They also learn to express their own beliefs and ideas with confidence….. https://exchange.uncc.edu/students-learn-research-debate-skills-in-nc-student-legislature/

The Gerald G. Fox Master of Public Administration has earned national recognition, including being named the nation’s second-best value MPA degree and ranking in the top 25% of public affairs programs by U.S. News & World Report. The program has worked to endow its longest-awarded scholarship, the Burkhalter-Rassel Scholarship, and welcomed Tom Barth as its […]

Five UNC Charlotte students attended the two presidential nominating conventions this summer – one as an elected delegate and four through an academic program with The Washington Center. Four of the students are pursuing majors or minors in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, while the fifth is a finance major in the Belk […]

As Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, people worldwide converged around TVs to witness the devastation of an iconic city and government’s response to the storm. This catastrophic, list-altering event served as a pivotal point in researcher Cherie Maestas’ work. She has applied her research in the creation of her experimental lab POLS-LABat UNC […]

Professor Beth Whitaker has been named as a finalist for the 2015 Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence. This award honors outstanding teachers at UNC Charlotte and represents an example of the University’s commitment to excellence in teaching. The five finalists for this year’s award will be honored at a ceremony in September 2015 […]

Professor Beth Whitaker and her colleagues John Clark (Florida International University), Pamela Mbabazi (Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda), and Kennedy Mkutu (United States International University, Kenya) co-led the 2015 American Political Science Association Africa Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, on July 20-31, 2015. Centered around the theme of “Conflict and Political Violence,” the workshop […]

The UNC Charlotte Political Science and Public Administration Faculty have published a variety of books recently, including the following: In July 2015 Greg Weeks published the second edition of his textbook U.S. and Latin American Relations with Wiley. It was completely updated and includes a new chapter on the response to U.S. hegemony in Latin […]

Professor Maureen Brown and Zachary Mohr were awarded a research grant as part of the Department of Defense (DoD) Basic and Applied Scientific Research in conjunction with the Naval Post Graduate School’s FY14 Acquisition Research Program. The purpose of the grant is to analyze cross-organizational network contagion and performance. The total funding provided by the […]

Dr. Justin Conrad and one of our undergraduate students, Kevin Greene, published an article, “Competition, Differentiation and the Severity of Terrorist Attacks” in the Journal of Politics. They discussed additional implications of their study on the website Political Violence at a Glance. Their research was subsequently selected as one of the “Top 5 Ideas of […]

Dr. Eric Heberlig and his co-author, Bruce A. Larson, were recently awarded the 26th D.B. Hardeman Prize by the LBJ Foundation. The award recognized their recently published University of Michigan Press book, Congressional Parties, Institutional Ambition, and the Financing of Majority Control as the most significant book on the U.S. Congress in several fields, includig […]

Jaclyn Piatak and Zach Mohr both have forthcoming publications in the Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory. Professor Piatak’s first article examines the effects of informal norms of accountability on service delivery systems, while her more recent article looks at volunteerism across public, private and non-profit sectors. Professor Mohr’s article explores the impact of […]

Sarah Pettijohn will be joining our faculty this fall. A soon-to-be graduate of American University, she studies nonprofits organizations as well as nonprofit and public management. Recently recognized as an Emerging Scholar by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Sarah also brings a wealth of experience gained while working at the […]

Cherie Maestas will be joining the Department of Political Science & Public Administration as the Marshall A. Rauch Distinguished Professor. Among other things, Dr. Maestas has published in all of the top general political science journals as well as Cambridge University Press. Here research focuses on public opinion and legislative responsiveness.

An article to be published in the International Public Management Journal by two professors from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands used article output from the Web of Science and Scopus from 2009-2013 to create rankings of top Public Administrations world wide. The UNC Charlotte Public Administration program had the ninth most top-tiered publications among […]

UNC Charlotte Political Science professors James Walsh, Beth Whitaker and Justin Conrad are part of a team that recently was awarded a Minerva Research Initiative grant to study natural resources and armed conflict. The total award amount for the grant, which runs through 2016, is over $800,000.