An online information session will be held Thursday, February 23, 1-2:00 PM MST. Access the information session here: https://uidaho.zoom.us/j/88430124333

A doctoral level science or social science degree (e.g., PhD. ScD, MD, DDS, DVM) or a master’s in engineering and three years of work experience is required. ISTP fellows are provided with compensation, benefits, orientation, professional development, mentorship, a travel allowance and administrative support. 

For more information about the ISTPF and how you can apply, please visit the ISTPF website and application, and follow us on Twitter @ScienceIdaho. If you have questions about the ISTPF, then please contact us at istpf@uidaho.edu. 

An online information session will be held February 23, 1:00-2:00 PM MST.

Applications are due by Sunday, March 26, 2023, and the fellowship year begins in late August 2023.

The ISTPF is a collaborative effort among Boise State University, Idaho State University and University of Idaho, and is led by the McClure Center for Public Policy Research.

Hatfield Resident Fellowship Opportunities - Paid Public Service Experience

The Center for Public Service is recruiting nationally for currently-enrolled and recently-graduated Master's and Ph.D. students to serve as project managers with Oregon's public agencies and organizations in 2022-2023. Start dates range between May and September, depending on project needs and candidate availability. Share this link with students from your university to Learn more and apply for fellowships!

From online public participation platforms to smartphone apps, technology is fundamentally changing the government-resident relationship. Public engagement is the cornerstone of that relationship and it continues to evolve as we see more and more cities become smart cities. The impact of that technology is felt across all departments from how technology can help facilitate public engagement to cyber security considerations to analyzing data collected to determining the right use of social media. In an environment of rapid change and increasing challenges, what will it take to deliver higher-quality outcomes for our communities? 

When: Wednesdays from October 5 - November 9 | 3 - 5:30 pm (PST)

Cost: $1195

More info and registration

From the Jorge M. Pérez Metropolitan Center (Florida International University)

This report follows the center's monthly COVID Economic Recovery Index to provide an overview on the effects of the pandemic on the economy and the labor force. it is aimed at assisting local policymakers and economic and community development officials in strategy and program development. You can view the full report  here . 

This seven-session virtual certificate program is designed for emerging leaders who need new skills and tools to implement organizational change and propel their careers forward. 

When: April 19, May 5, May 12, May 19, May 26, June 2, June 21 (All Sessions are 1- 4 pm Eastern Time)

Cost: $2,250 (20% discount for government and nonprofits)

More information and registration

New Manager Webinar Series

This two-part webinar series (six sessions per series) is designed for managers with limited experience in managing direct reports. These learning modules are focused on core skills that any manager should master to be effective in engaging, developing, and retaining talent, and driving the performance of their team members. 

When: Wednesdays, starting April 13 | 3 - 4:30 pm (Eastern Time)

Cost: $1,000 for twelve part series; $600 for one series; $125 per webinar

More information, full schedule, and registration

The Morrison Institute for Public Policy (Arizona State University) recently conducted a state-wide survey, funded by the Arizona Community Foundation exploring statewide perceptions of officer-involved shooting investigations, attitudes toward potential reforms, and support for funding of an independent investigatory agency. 

You can explore the results of the survey here. 

Morrison Director Andrea Whitsett will be participating in a panel at the CUPSO annual conference in Nashville, April 6-8 that looks at how survey methods are changing in the 21st Century. You can find out more about that panel and register for the conference here.

University-based public service organizations make a difference in their community and on their campus. But CUPSO members are often better at telling other people's stories than they are at sharing their own. But that is exactly what The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia is doing through  their first-ever impact report. The report shows measurable outcomes from the Cooper Center as they work toward implementing their strategic plan. If you are new here, this is a great taste of what public service work means. If you are already working in or with a public service organization, this is offers an example that may help you think about how to share your own impact. You can explore the report here. 

The Davenport Institute's virtual Certificate Program in Public Engagement for Local Government is a 6-week online training for mid-career professionals. It is a one-of-a-kind program designed to give local government leaders the tools they need to engage the full diversity of their community in decisions that impact people where they live and work. This virtual offering will consist of a series of five, two-and-a-half-hour modules held over the course of five afternoons. There will be 3 cohorts offered in 2022 and applications are open for all of them. 

Cohort 1: February 22 - March 29 (2:30 - 5:00 pm, Pacific Time)

Cohort 2: May 24 - June 28 (3:00 - 5:30 pm, Pacific Time)

Cohort 3: October 11 - November 15 (3:00 - 5:30 Pacific Time)

Find out more and apply here.

At the CUPSO Annual Conference, our colleague Eric Heller announced that he would be retiring from his role as Executive Director of the Donahue Institute at University of Massachusetts Amherst.  In late June, the Donahue Institute announced that Dr. Johan E. Uvin would be the next Executive Director of the Donahue Institute, starting August 1. 

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Heller on his retirement, and welcoming Dr. Uvin to the CUPSO family!  You can read the full announcement from UMass Amherst here. 

The Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy recently hosted a 5-part webinar series in partnership with Emerging Local Government Leaders (ELGL) exploring how the global COVID-19 pandemic has shaped the way local governments are engaging with their residents. A year later, social distancing guidelines are relaxing, and in-person engagement is  imaginable again - but governments have learned much from their forays into virtual engagement and won't be going back to business as usual.  You can find access recordings of all five webinars here. 

CUPSO Members Help States and Communities Respond to COVID-19

In keeping with their public service missions, members of the Consortium of University Public Service Organizations (CUPSO) are putting their policy research, technical assistance, data analysis and other skills to work in helping states and communities respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

The University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Institute played a leadership role in developing Utah Leads Together, a plan for the state’s COVID-19 recovery which focuses on both health and the economy.

https://gardner.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/Utah-Leads-Together.pdf

The School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has developed a microsite that includes resources and information for North Carolina public officials across a variety of subject areas related to COVID-19. Among the School’s offerings are a series of free webinars on public health, privacy, tax, employment, utility and other governmental issues impacted by COVID-19.

https://www.sog.unc.edu/resources/microsites/coronavirus-covid-19

North Carolina State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues is hosting a weekly Zoom podcast series featuring virtual conversations with key public, private and non-profit leaders on the impacts of COVID-19 and some of the ways the state is responding.

https://iei.ncsu.edu/podcast/

The Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs at Rutgers University-Camden partnered with the Center for Integrative and Computational Biology on its campus to release a report comparing estimates of available hospital beds, by county, with the likely demand for beds under three virus spread scenarios. This was followed by a report showing the first day that each county would reach hospital bed capacity.

https://rand.camden.rutgers.edu/2020/03/26/timing-county-hospital-bed-shortfall-during-covid-19/

The University of Delaware’s Institute for Public Administration has created a curated Wakelet collection called, “Delaware & U.S. Local Government Response to COVID-19: What are cities, towns, and counties in Delaware and the U.S. doing to serve community members and protect lives during this unprecedented health emergency?”

https://wke.lt/w/s/H7ufj6

The University of Tennessee’s Institute for Public Service has created a Wakelet site dedicated to COVID-19 resources across the state of Tennessee. The site includes daily news stories as well as links to other resources both within and outside the university.

https://wke.lt/w/s/GnXRmO

Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and Education Policy Innovation Collaborative have jointly been tracking crisis responses related to K-12 school closures across all 50 states.

https://ippsr.msu.edu/state-policies-address-covid-19-school-closure

Pepperdine University’s Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership has curated a set of resources for helping local governments and locally-focused agencies continue to engage the public during this time of social distancing.

https://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenport-institute/thought-leadership/news.htm. 

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Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan has compiled a list of experts at the University that are available to discuss how the coronavirus pandemic and responses at the federal, state, and local levels are likely impacting low-income families in the U.S.

https://poverty.umich.edu/news-events/news/coronavirus-and-low-income-families-u-m-experts-can-discuss-impact/

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CUPSO is a nationwide organization that supports university-based public service institutes in their efforts to assist state and local governments on a range of contemporary issues and challenges. Members focus on:

·          

Improving policy making by providing credible research and evaluation information.

Improving government management practices through research, training and technical assistance.

Developing leadership skills among city, county, state and regional government and nonprofit leaders.

By Roger Nielsen, Public Relations Coordinator, Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

Small in numbers but mighty in purpose, university service organizations that provide training and resources to local and state government officials gathered in mid-April at the University of Georgia for an annual conference.

About 75 public service directors and faculty, representing about three dozen universities from across the country, attended the 2018 Consortium of University Public Service Organizations, hosted by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at UGA.

“We feel honored to bring together our fellow university-based public service and outreach leaders from across the country to UGA,” said Laura Meadows, director of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government and immediate past president of CUPSO. “We’re able to gain valuable insights to enhance the impactful work we are already doing here to help Georgia’s state and local governments and to share our work with others.”

Over three days, conference participants learned about their roles in statewide issues, civic education and their role in elections. They also shared their academic work that is used to provide opportunities and address challenges in their states.

David Tanner, an associate director at the Vinson Institute, moderated a session on the role of public service institutes and centers in statewide issues. Participants in the session were from North Carolina State University, Michigan State University and Arizona State University. “Coming together helps us understand that we are all dealing with similar issues across our states,” Tanner said. “We’re able to explore how each of our different institutes approach those problems and provide our stakeholders with information. We compare notes and share projects and data.”

This kind of assistance is invaluable to local and state government officials, said Phil Keisling, CUPSO president and director of Portland State University’s Center for Public Service.

“CUPSO members are the people that straddle the academic and the professional world,” he said.

UGA President Jere W. Morehead and University System of Georgia Chancellor Steve Wrigley spoke to the group about leadership during Friday’s opening session. Wrigley previously served as director of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government and vice president for public service and outreach at UGA.

Organized in 1979, CUPSO supports university-based public service institutes in their efforts to assist state and local governments on a range of contemporary issues and challenges. CUPSO facilitates networking, information exchange, and collaboration among its member institutions.

UGA Vice President for Public Service and Outreach Jennifer Frum, also a former Carl Vinson Institute of Government director, said having the meeting here spoke to the national reputation of UGA Public Service and Outreach. “It’s fitting that UGA’s largest public service unit, the Vinson Institute, is hosting a national forum for scholarship and best practices related to government leadership,” Frum said. “We welcome faculty from some of this country’s most respected institutions to learn about our successes and share theirs with us.”

The original organization was initiated by former Vice President for Public Service and Outreach Delmer Dunn during a political science conference in 1978, and was officially founded in 1979 as the Southern Consortium of University Public Service Organizations, said Linda Hoke, who has been director of CUPSO since 1998. Dunn was elected Cupso’s founding president in 1980. In 2015, with interest in the organization growing nationwide, the organization dropped the “S” to become CUPSO.

“Dr. Dunn was the one who convened us and saw the value of sharing advice and knowledge,” Hoke said. “CUPSO has grown into a really diverse mix of institutes and centers, but they all share the same public service mission.”

In addition to abysmally low voter turnout, the Who Votes for Mayor project revealed several additional findings:

• Younger voters aren’t participating. In America’s 30 largest cities, 46.7 percent of registered voters over the age of 65 voted in the last mayoral election, as compared to 9 percent of registered voters aged 18 to 34. As a result: 1) Voters in mayoral elections trend older. The median age of those actually casting ballots—57—was nearly a full generation older than the median age of the eligible voting population. In eight cities, including Houston, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Dallas, the median voter age was above 60. 2) Older residents have more “electoral clout,” with residents 65 years and older up to 56 times more likely to vote than residents 18-34 years old.

• Certain neighborhoods have dramatically higher turnout than others, yielding an uneven distribution of voting “oases” and “deserts” within the same city. In Dallas, for example, nearly one in three residents live in voting deserts, which are neighborhoods where turnout was half (or less) than the citywide average.

How cities ranked

Across the country, cities varied greatly in how many people turned out and how representative of the population voters were. For a full comparison, visit https://www.whovotesformayor.org/compare

Lowest voter turnout:

1. Dallas, Texas, 6.1%
2. Fort Worth, Texas, 6.5% turnout
3. Las Vegas, Nev., 9.4% turnout

Highest voter turnout:

1. Portland, Ore., 59.4%
2. Louisville, Ky., 45.4% turnout
3. Seattle, Wash., 44.5% turnout

Most Voting Deserts:

1. Dallas, Texas, 31.9% who live in voting deserts
2. Fort Worth, Texas, 24.8% who live in voting deserts
3. Phoenix, Ariz., 19.7% who live in voting deserts

“In the vast majority of local elections, young people are ceding decisions for the future to their grandparents,” said Phil Keisling, Director of Portland State University’s Center for Public Service. “There are a number of actions we can take to improve turnout, such as coupling local elections with national elections, increasing voter registration, changing where and how voters can receive and return their ballots, and reeling in the influence of money in politics.”

The Who Votes for Mayor project breaks important new ground in the world of electoral research by combining voting and U.S. Census data from 85 mayoral elections in the nation’s 30 largest cities, as well as 20 other smaller communities across the U.S. Researchers analyzed more than 23 million voting records and extensive demographic data from more than 10,000 U.S. Census tracts.

Interactive data on all 50 cities is available at www.whovotesformayor.org.

Every day, over half a million local elected officials across the country are making important and influential decisions about core services like police and fire, drinking water, economic development and roads and public transportation for the more than 80 percent of Americans who live in cities. When voter turnout in local elections is low, a small percentage of residents can have outsize influence in policy choices that have far-reaching consequences across cities and regions.

In three-quarters of the cities studied, mayors and other local officials are chosen in odd-number year elections (as opposed to Presidential elections and midterm elections), a remnant of decisions made over a century ago when these off-year elections were set up to give voters time to focus on local issues. Turnout is usually much higher during Presidential election years, and several cities have moved their local elections into alignment with the Presidential contest.

“One person, one vote is a core principle of American democracy for a very good reason—when turnout is abysmally low, more attention is paid to the interests of small groups of people instead of community-wide issues of equity and good governance,” said Benjamin de la Peña, Director for Community and National Strategy at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “The danger of such low participation in local elections is the risk that elected leaders will not address serious and pressing issues that disproportionately affect historically disadvantaged communities.”

Who Votes for Mayor is a joint project of Portland State University and Knight Foundation. The study’s research team was led by Dr. Jason Jurjevich and former Oregon Secretary of State Phil Keisling, and also included Kevin Rancik, Carson Gorecki, and Stephanie Hawke.

City-by-city election data from the study is freely available for download on the Who Votes for Mayor website under a Creative Commons license. For more information, visit www.whovotesformayor.org.

The report, “Improving Quality of Life: The Effect of Aligning Local Service Delivery and Public Health Goals,” can be downloaded from the ICMA website at https://bit.ly/2eo0XU6.

In the report, Institute faculty member Paula Sanford and co-author Joshua Franzel, ICMA’s director of policy research, explore the many ways that local governments contribute to effective public health. The report examines how local government infrastructure and services like water and sanitation, land use and planning, and transportation systems support a healthy environment and encourage healthy lifestyles.

Besides providing basic services like clean water and effective sanitation, local governments exert a strong influence on public health by supporting communities that are safe and attractive places for people to live, work, and enjoy leisure time. The report also discusses how the services that local governments provide can improve residents’ quality of life, save resources, and enhance economic and labor force development. For example, local government investments in sidewalks and bicycle lanes encourage healthful behavior, discourage obesity and related chronic diseases, and bolster property values by creating a desirable place to live.

ICMA proposed the paper as a way to remind government managers how many ways their work affects public health, according to Sanford.

Through its five agencies, which provide training and technical consulting to state and local governments, businesses and law enforcement, IPS answered close to 30,000 requests for assistance in the last fiscal year. IPS agencies also trained more than 15,300 of its customers in everything from crime scene investigation to county and municipal government operations.

“Our employees are dedicated to the IPS mission of outreach in the public service sector, and that’s evident by the economic impact and training participant numbers we saw last year,” said IPS Vice President Dr. Herb Byrd III. “Thanks to the work of our Center for Industrial Services, many businesses across the state secured multi-million-dollar government contracts, which led to positive economic impacts for many counties across the state.”

Byrd is referring to the CIS Procurement Technical Assistance Center, which guides businesses through the government contracting process. Through the assistance of the consultants dedicated to this program, small and veteran-owned businesses secured more than $800 million in contracts last year. One example is a woman-owned Tennessee business that won a five-year contract, valued at more than $1 million a year, with the Department of the Defense.