Faculty's Current Research and Activities

The School of Environmental and Public Affairs provides an umbrella for exciting, interdisciplinary research and teaching in public administration and governance, environmental science and studies, non-profit management, urban studies, and natural resources management. What is faculty doing now? Here is a sample:

Ernie Joaquin studies the drivers and problems of public management reform in the United States. Some of her works have recently appeared in Public Performance and Management Review and the American Review of Public Administration, and in 2012 in the International Review of Administrative Sciences and International Journal of Public Sector Management. She looks at the adaptation of traditional administrative institutions and the workforce to emerging governance structures, and issues of ethics and institutional capacity resulting from fiscal pressures. She is currently working on papers on the capacity of local government to manage alternative service delivery arrangements, the preparatory role of MPA programs for "boundary managers," and gubernatorial perceptions of budget leadership.

Ed Weber continues to publish peer reviewed articles and book chapters on a variety of topics, including socio-ecological resilience and climate protected communities (forthcoming with MIT Press), science and the policy process (several Forestry journals), and governing transboundary resources in the face of uncertainty (with Matt McKinney). He has also submitted a major grant proposal in 2011 with New Zealand colleagues on water resource management and will attend the Alliance for Innovation conference in Colorado in October 2011. He continues to serve as a member of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Mojave-Southern Nevada RAC (Resource Advisory Committee).

Jessica Word serves as the director of the Graduate Certificate of Nonprofit Management at UNLV and recently completed a report in partnership with Opportunity Knocks, Inc. concerning the state of nonprofit employee engagement. Her research interests include public and nonprofit management issues, social networks, and human resource management. Her research has been published in Public Administration Review (PAR), Review of Public Personnel Administration, Public Personnel Management, the Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, the Innovation Journal, and Public Integrity.