Our Practitioner Faculty

Kent State University’s faculty are devoted advocates for their students and for the fields of public and nonprofit service. They collectively bring an extensive history of academic research combined with significant in-field work experience, allowing our programs to balance academic rigor with a practitioner focus. Learn from faculty who have:

  • Specialized in a wide variety of topics that influence public administration and policy – including e-government, immigration policy and privatization, and public policy reform
  • Served as leaders within the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA)
  • Held positions within the local and state government
  • Published articles in a wide variety of public administration and public policy journals including Public Administration Review, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Administration & Society, and International Public Management Journal

Faculty Spotlight on Dr. Anthony D. Molina

Anthony Molina comes from a public service background. His father was a Cleveland police officer, and his mother was a nurse. After graduating from high school, he went into the Air Force and got a taste for public service. “I got into public administration because I’m attracted to public service,” Molina says. “I grew up in a family where public service was highly valued.”

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Anthony D. Molina, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Interim Department Chair | Department of Political Science
Master of Public Administration
amolina4@kent.edu

Anthony Molina is currently an Associate Professor and Interim Department Chair of Political Science. Before coming to Kent State University, he served as Director of Graduate Studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Dakota. His teaching and research interests include political philosophy, professional ethics, administrative law, qualitative research methods, public administration theory and the role of public service values in administrative decision making. His scholarly work has been published in Administration & Society, Journal of Public Affairs Education and the International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior.

Dr. Molina received his MPA in in 1999 and his Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Public Affairs from the Maxine Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University in 2004.

Brian Kelley

Instructor - Department of Political Science
Master of Public Administration
bkelley1@kent.edu

Learn more about Brian Kelley

Daniel Chand

Associate Professor - Department of Political Science
Master of Public Administration

Daniel E. Chand (“Danny”) received his Ph.D. in Public Policy in the Policy Management specialization at the University of Arkansas and has a masters in Political Science with an emphasis in Community Development from Illinois State University. His primary areas of interests are policy implementation (specifically relating to immigration policy) and political activities by nonprofits. His current research projects include an examination of 501(c) nonprofits involved in federal elections and a study of disparities in immigration court outcomes. He has worked with a number of policy nonprofits, such as Emily’s List and the American Civil Liberties Union. Before earning his Ph.D., he designed and implemented community development projects and program evaluations in both the United States and abroad. From 2006 through 2008, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Zambia.

Learn more about Daniel Chand

Daniel Hawes, Ph.D

MPA Coordinator and Associate Professor - Department of Political Science
Master of Public Administration
dhawes2@kent.edu

Daniel Hawes’ research interests deal with questions related to public policy and public administration, broadly, and substantively focus on education and immigration policy. His research incorporates aspects of public administration, public management and state and local politics in examining questions of public policy and policy performance. A central theme in his research is a focus on the determinants of public policy outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged groups. A fundamental question that his work has sought to address is how can government—via policy, structure, bureaucracy or management—better address the inequalities we observe in policy outcomes for disadvantaged groups? In doing so, his work has explicitly examined the role of public management, organizational structure, political representation, organizational and external environments on shaping policy outcomes. He has approached this broad question through different theoretical lenses (social capital, representative bureaucracy, rational choice, public management) and in different substantive contexts (K-12 education, higher education and immigration).

Dr. Hawes earned his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 2008.

Learn more about Dr. Hawes

Mark Cassell, Ph.D.

Professor of Political Science - Department of Political Science
Master of Public Administration
mcassell@kent.edu

Mark K. Cassell is Professor of Political Science where he teaches courses in public policy and administration, comparative public policy and urban politics. His scholarship is mainly concerned with understanding public sector transformation.

His work includes How Governments Privatize: The Politics of Divestment in the United States and Germany (Georgetown University Press, 2003). The book compares the Resolution Trust Corporation with Germany’s Treuhandanstalt, the agency charged with taking over, managing and privatizing the industrial assets of the former East Germany. The book received the 2003 Charles H. Levine Award for the best book in public policy and administration.

Dr. Cassell holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MPA from the Robert LaFollette Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Learn more about Dr. Cassell

Gabriella Paár-Jákli

Assistant Professor
gjakli@kent.edu

Education:
Ph.D. in Political Science, Kent State University, M.B.A. with concentration in International Business, Kent State University, 2001, B.A. in Foreign Trade & Economics, Budapest, Hungary, B.S. in Engineering, Pécs, Hungary

Wendy Patton

Assistant Professor
wpatton4@kent.edu

Education:
Master of City Planning, University of California, Berkeley, B.A. English and Political Science, Kent State University

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Featured Article

March 23, 2022
The World Bank explains ‘big data’ as, “a term widely used to describe the exponential growth of data, particularly the data flowing from ubiquitous mobile phones, satellites, ground sensors, vehicles and social media. It also explains the rise of the computing technologies and algorithms that harness big data for valuable insights.”
March 02, 2022
Daniel Hawes, MPA Coordinator and Associate Professor in Kent State University’s Department of Political Science, recently published a study titled “Representative Bureaucracy, Institutional Support, and Clientele Need: The Case of Undocumented Students” in the Administration and Society journal. Read a synopsis of his research and background on the subject here.
January 12, 2022
Earning your degree as a part-time student means you can continue to work while you gain relevant skills to move your public sector career forward. But there’s more to it than just avoiding a break in your resume.
January 11, 2022
Between websites, social media, emails and snail-mail, the sheer volume of available information about master’s degree programs can make a prospective student’s head spin—or, worse, they can overwhelm that candidate into forgoing graduate school altogether. There’s an easier, much more productive way forward.
November 22, 2021
Nonprofits are allowed to advocate for social issues but how far can they go to change public policy? Kent State MPA faculty researched this topic studying immigrant-serving organizations to find out how nonprofits are using their status to make changes for the people who depend on them.
October 11, 2021
MPA stands for Master of Public Administration. As the name suggests, most people who pursue this degree work in the public sector which includes any part of a state or national economy that is tied to public programs or services and is controlled by the government.
September 28, 2021
An online MPA degree will substantially increase your earning potential and prepare you to be a top-tier agent of positive change. Keep reading to learn all the details about earning an online Master of Public Administration or MPA degree, from a full program description to the excellent career options you can look forward to as a master of public administration.
September 27, 2021
Grad school can open a world of opportunities. People interested in strengthening skills to head an organization might need to make a decision between more than one degree, specifically: a Master of Public Administration (MPA) or Master of Business Administration (MBA).
August 23, 2021
As with jobs in all industries, jobs in the public sector have certain advantages and disadvantages. While each person might have their own opinion of what constitutes a positive or negative aspect of any career, read on for our take on the pros and cons of working in the public sector.
June 24, 2021
In 2020, the nature of work changed rapidly. The pace of change has only continued to accelerate in 2021, with many companies keeping hybrid work schedules—a reality that seemed a distant dream prior to the pandemic. Fortunately for many learners hoping to achieve greater economic prosperity, higher education is changing, as well.
June 23, 2021
If recent newspaper headlines are to be believed, many people are wondering if the U.S. government is getting too large. While it’s true that over 15% of the workforce is involved in the military, public and national service, the size of the U.S. government proportionate to the total population has actually shrunk in the last 50 years.
June 11, 2021
The terms ‘public sector’ and ‘private sector’ appear frequently in the news. Reports on the pandemic, the economy and employment numbers, among other topics, often discuss how each sector will be affected by recent developments. Exactly what are the private and public sectors, and how do they differ from each other?
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