L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs

L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs

 Menu

News

Wilder School Faculty and Students to Present at APPAM

Evening image of Chicago skyline.
Evening image of Chicago skyline.

By Tiffany Murray-Robertson

Next week, several Wilder School faculty and students will travel to Chicago to present their scholarship at the 2017 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Fall Research Conference.

An annual hallmark event for those field, APPAM brings together distinguished academia, practitioners and policymakers to share their insights on a wide variety of important current and emerging policy and management issues.

This year’s conference will take place Nov. 2-4 and will focus on the importance of data and measurement, and celebrate the government staff who work to improve the measures we use every day.

Faculty members Sarah Jane Brubaker, Ph.D., and Susan Gooden, Ph.D., will be in attendance along with doctoral students Dhara Amin and Tammi Slovinsky.  A former Wilder Fellow and native Chicagoan, Amin is the recipient of APPAM’s 2017 Equity and Inclusion Student Fellowship.

The fellowship recognizes outstanding students from underrepresented backgrounds and provides recipients with enhanced opportunities for networking and professional development.

Brubaker, Gooden and Slovinsky will be presenting work as detailed below.

Brubaker, a doctoral program chair and associate professor of public policy, will present findings from a qualitative study that explores the impact of recent changes to the application and interpretation of Title IX. Brubaker posits that that these changes serve to illuminate and exacerbate the gendered dimensions of campus-based sexual assault advocates.

Her study, “Campus-Based Sexual Assault Victim Advocates: Gendered Dimensions of a Complex Role,” suggests that campus advocates operate in a pervasive culture of masculine-defined bureaucratic organization and instrumental rationality that inhibits the goals and practices of feminist-informed advocacy. Brubaker, who also serves as the Wilder School’s institutional representative at APPAM is also helping to organize a joint table to promote the Wilder School and the Department of Health Behavior and Policy at a special pre-conference workshop for graduate students.

Gooden, a public administration professor, will present findings from a qualitative study that examines the role of African American-led (AAL) nonprofit organizations in improving outcomes for demographically similar youth. Her paper, “Examining Youth Outcomes of African American-Led Nonprofits,” finds that youth who participate in AAL programs experience higher academic achievement and higher levels of self-esteem than their peers. Gooden’s presentation is the result of a multi-year study funded by the Manhattan Institute.

Last year, her scholarship on AALs served as the basis of a related paper which garnered the “Best Academic Paper Award” from the Northeast Conference on Public Administration (NECoPA).

Tammi Slovinsky, a doctoral student in public policy and administration will present a poster paper entitled “Exploring the Justice Gateway: Virginia Prosecutors' Perspectives on Title IX, Campus Sexual Assault and Procedural Considerations.”
Slovinsky hopes to unpack the impact of recent legislation that mandates the disclosure of certain sexual assault offenses reported to Virginia colleges and universities to local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors. Through a qualitative study collected via in-depth interviews with prosecutors across Virginia, Slovinsky will examine how prosecutors make use of the data disclosed by colleges and universities as well as their perceptions of the influence of internal and external relationships on their decision-making.