My mission is to help people in the public sector identify specific opportunities for improving public outcomes through engagement with accurate data and robust research and analysis. I have collaborated with a wide variety of educational foundations, grant-makers, and policymakers. My work has helped many organizations identify operational and financial issues, resulting in measurable performance and financial improvements. In one case, I helped save a school system $2 million by pointing out that its utility cost was an aberration.My projects have included agency budgeting and planning as well as developing analyses of exceptionally large data sets, some as large as 67 million records, requiring various big data tools for statistical and data visualization, including Stata, Tableau, SPSS, and Alteryx (with R). My sandbox site for Tableau is at https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/evaluator#!

Teaching in-person course on American Political Thought (4 hour course), beginning with James I's claim to divine right to Project 2025.

Teaching online courses (on Canvas) in political science: Introduction to Public Policy (PSC 110), The American Presidency (PSC 332), and Religion and Politics (PSC 317).

As a member of the Graduate Faculty, I participated on 15 doctoral dissertation committees for students in the Community College Leadership program, where I taught program evaluation. My teaching assignments also include Normative Political Evaluation of American Public Policy (PPA 9413), Ethics in Public Administration (PPA 8990), and Public Program Evaluation (PPA 8733) for graduate students pursuing a doctorate or master's degree in Public Policy and Administration. I also taught Introduction to Political Theory (PS 2403) and Western Political Theory (PS 4553) at the undergraduate level. I taught PPA 8733, at the doctoral level for 15 years, online for the last ten years.

I reviewed contributions to the state integrity investigations for several southern states for two years. These investigations reviewed public access to information, judicial accountability, state civil service management, ethics enforcement agencies, and state pension fund management for all 50 states.My areas of expertise are Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas, though I only reviewed two during the second round of reviews.

I reviewed institutional applications during two grant cycles for the Fund for the Improvement for Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) grants. These grants were designed to be experiments in higher education. The grant website, which includes links to the projects completed, can be found here: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/fipse/index.html

In the Mississippi Delta and across the state, I assisted local governments in budgeting, identifying, and applying for grants and loans from federal and private funding sources, assisting the Academy for Local Officials in providing local government officials with specialized budget training and linked Mississippi State University's applied and basic research units with the state's local officials and community leaders. During this time, I published "A Technical Report on Municipal Accounting and Information Systems, July 2003, and received a $15,000 grant from IBM's Center for the Business of Government, publishing a chapter entitled, "Using a Performance Budgeting System: Lessons from the Texas Experience" Managing for Results Series, The IBM Endowment for the Business of Government. Edited by John M. Kamensky and Albert Morales. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. I also worked on Municipal Salary Surveys and Mississippi's Child Care Development Fund. To eliminate an eight-week backlog for boat registration and titling, I initiated a collaboration with the Bagley College of Engineering’s Six Sigma program. My final project was an evaluation of a program federally funded (FIPSE) project designed to train local leaders in special leadership courses at six rural community colleges in economically distressed parts of Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, and Virginia.

Responsibilities included building and managing a $750,000 department with a staff of 11 in the development of all phases of strategic planning, performance measurement, and reporting, legislative compliance monitoring, statutory reporting, and ad hoc budget analyses. The department provided performance measure development and reporting/compliance training for more than 60 internal staff as well as selected staff from 28 local workforce development boards. This office served as the designated single-point-of-contact for the Governor's Office of Budget and Planning, Legislative Budget Board, Senate Finance, House Appropriations, the Comptroller of Public Accounts, and the U.S. General Accounting Office on matters pertaining to agency performance. The department also monitored the implementation of more than 170 pieces of legislation and developed more than 100 internal planning projects involving multiple units of government.

My responsibilities included budget and performance analysis for $1.4 billion in annual appropriations for 11 state agencies: the Texas Finance Commission, the Texas Department of Banking, the Savings & Loan Department, the Office of the Consumer Credit Commissioner, the Credit Union Department, the State Securities Board, the Texas Racing Commission, the State Board of Public Accountancy, the Board of Tax Professional Examiners (since absorbed into the Comptroller's Office of Public Accounts), the Department of Licensing and Regulation and the Texas Workforce Commission. I co-chaired hearings with the Governor's Office of Budget and Planning and testified more than 50 times in House Appropriations and Senate Finance Committee hearings.

Duties in the Office of Research and Educational Accountability included researching complex policy issues and drafting reports and recommendations, staffing special committees, and writing legislative documents (fiscal notes) on the probable fiscal impact of pending legislation on the state budget. Topics of research included the evaluation of state economic forecasts, salaries for county officials, capital spending by colleges and universities, costs of accreditation for higher education, workers' compensation, and federal block grants. For more information about this agency, see https://comptroller.tn.gov/office-functions/research-and-education-accountability.html

As a visiting assistant professor (non-tenure track), I taught a wide range of courses in political science and public administration, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, my courses included Political Parties and Politics, Administrative Responsibility (undergraduate level), Leadership and Administrative Responsibility (graduate level), Introduction to American Government, Introduction to Political Theory, Independent Study (American parties), Graduate Readings (American parties), International Organizations. I also chaired a student's Masters' degree committee and supervised four graduate teaching assistants and one undergraduate research assistant. Research activities included statistical modeling dealing with federal budgetary priorities, analyses of the impact of the federal budget on employment, and the formation of public opinion and political attitudes.

1992 (Jan.-May) Corporate Housing Rep------Trammel Crow Residential, Dallas, TX1991 (Oct-Dec.) Telemarketer------Edward Blank & Associates, Arlington, TX1991 (Aug.-Sept.) Consultant------Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School System, Grapevine, TX1991 (Sept.-Nov.) Tech Support------Leading Edge Computers, Dallas, TX

Duties included supervising a Research Center with a staff of eight researchers in producing The Taylor's Encyclopedia of Government Officials, the Clements Encyclopedia of World Governments and related publications. The company collected information directly from government agencies, including foreign consulates and embassies, American secretaries of state, as well as all federal and state agencies. Additionally, the department responded to research requests on a toll-free, 1-800 service. Publications to more than 5,000 paid subscribers included two monthly publications, two quarterly updates to two encyclopedias, and several supplementary publications. Our publications were more current and more accurate in print than the Central Intelligence Agency (whose work we corrected). I left full-time employment to complete my dissertation, Parties, Ideologies, and Budgets: A Study of Budgetary Trade-Offs, Vanderbilt University (1992).

1990 Substitute Teacher, Crockett Independent School District, Crockett, TX----- Four weeks as computer lab instructor1986 (Jun.-July) Waiter, Holiday Inn, Nacogdoches, TX ----- Part-time, sometimes the lone employee on site.1986 (Jun.-July) Cook, Diji’s Oyster Bar, Nacogdoches, TX----- Part-time, open style kitchen with customers at bar.1985 (May - Aug.) Ranch Hand, K-K Ranch, Buffalo, TX----- Feeding, fencing, moving hay bales, wrangling cattle.1982-1985 (Oct. '82 - May '85) Full-time Cook, Cenaré Italian Cuisine, College Station, TX----- Promoted from dishwasher to line cook in first six months.1982 (Sept.) Courier, Discount Coupon Delivery, College Station, TX----- In the field on motorcycle, receiving addresses by pay phone.1982 (May-Sept.) Salesman, Southwestern Company, Nashville, Tennessee----- Door-to-door sales in North Carolina, trained in Nashville.1982 (Mar.-May) Campaign Worker, Phil Gramm for Congress, Bryan, TX----- Conducted surveys for the Democratic Primary race.1981 (Sept.-Nov.) Laborer, Regan’s Department Store, College Station, TX----- Receiving, layaways, security patrol, engraving, and custom gift wrapping.1981 (May-Sept.) Welder’s Helper, Brown & Root Construction, Houston, TX----- High steel construction on drill platform jackets, beveling, and some submerged welding. 1980-1981 (May-May) Loading Trucks, Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Brenham, TX----- Loaded seven route trucks daily, 16,000 lbs. by hand, often after hours.1979 (May-Sept.) Painter, Brenham Independent School District, Brenham, TX----- Interior and exterior painting for five schools, often on scaffolding.

Compiled statistical appendices and prepared graphs and tables for a college textbook, Politics in Western Europe, M. Donald Hancock, ed. (1992).

I prepared and delivered lectures, graded papers, and conducted additional sections of class discussions. As a research assistant to M. Donald Hancock, Jacek Kugler, Erwin C. Hargrove, and Jean Bethke Elsthain, I conducted bibliographic research, preparing background information, arranging conference agendas, organizing panels, and generating bibliographies as requested by various professors. My assigned professors taught courses in international relations, American politics, comparative politics, political theory, and Soviet politics. Research topics included international relations, OECD economic and political statistics, women who led political movements, Jane Addams, and policy implementation.Class sizes varied from 30 to 120 students. During my assistantship, I was assigned two undergraduate courses to grade and assist with in addition to my own full-time course load. Later, that workload was reduced for subsequent TAs. Graduate assistantships at Vanderbilt are renewed on a competitive basis.

Research duties for Professor Erwin C. Hargrove included interdisciplinary research on the formation and implementation of social service, health, education and regulatory policies and required maintaining an annotated bibliography of sources and summarized the latest research findings. These findings set an agenda for further research on alternative modes of policy implementation resulting in a subsequent grant. Materials gathered included research on management, organizational behavior and development, and bureaucracy.