Latest Faculty Accomplishments

Associate Professor Lauren Jones, PhD student Marialejandra Guzmán Cruz and the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy completed a project for Colorado policy leaders, analyzing the costs and benefits associated with quality child care. Collaborating with the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab at the University of Denver, the team spent 14 months conducting a comprehensive two-part analysis: first, investigating the costs for providers to obtain licenses and enhance quality across the five levels, and second, exploring the economic benefits of child care for children, families, the workforce and the broader economy. Jones also published “The Effect of Household Earnings on Child School Mental Health Designations: Evidence from Administrative Data” in the Journal of Human Resources.

The City of Columbus, Ohio State and Glenn College in September hosted an international conference of cities dedicated to addressing all forms of hate, extremism and polarization at the local level. The Strong Cities Network, an independent global network, spent one day of its “City Leadership in Maintaining Social Cohesion Amid Global Crises” event learning about Ohio State experiences including ways the Glenn College assists the Columbus Division of Police in managing peaceful demonstrations and how Ohio State balances free speech and public safety in response to public protests on campus. Professor Clifford Stott, crowd behavior expert from the Keele Policing Academic Collaboration at Keele University in England who last year was a Glenn College visiting faculty member, gave a presentation about how his method of explaining crowd psychology and training police agencies has been used across the world, including in the United Kingdom and Ukraine.

Associate Professor Erynn Beaton, Professor Jos Raadschelders and Assistant Professor—Provost’s Fellow Greg Wilson published “The Yoke of Objectivity in Public Administration (and Beyond),” in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, inviting public administration scholars to remove the yoke of objectivity for a more honest, conscientious, and forthright field where scholars incorporate greater reflexivity into and take greater responsibility for the social impact of their work.

Associate Professor Jeffrey Bielicki is among a team of Ohio State colleagues and industry partners creating pathways for individuals with experience in STEM fields to enter the rapidly growing workforce in clean-tech battery manufacturing for the automotive industry. The program, funded with $1 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation, will provide unique career training and hands-on learning opportunities. In addition, Bielicki published “ML/AI, Data Science, and Exposure Science: Lessons Learned from Engagement with Communities and Public Health/Policy Planning for the Future” in Annals of Epidemiology.

Professor Jill Clark’s recent publications include “Perspectives of Community Members on Community-Based Participatory Research: A Systematic Literature Review” in the Journal of Urban Affairs; “The Potential of Urban Food Governance to Transform Lives, Cities and the Planet” in Global Food Security; “Neighbors’ Perceptions of University Engaged ‘Research’” in the Journal of Planning Education and Research; and “Social Equity of Public Participation Environments” in the Journal of Social Equity and Public Administration. 

Professor Neal Hooker published “Exploring Factors Influencing Repeated Recalls in the U.S. Meat and Poultry Industry,” in Agribusiness. Based on the findings, he and his colleagues draw policy and management implications for the government and meat and poultry plants to avoid repeated recalls.

Professor John Horack, Neil Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Policy at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs and the College of Engineering, is a co-principal investigator on an Accelerator Award through the most recent cycle of the President’s Research Excellence program at Ohio State. The awards, of up to $50,000 each, are designated for small teams formed to pursue curiosity-driven, novel, high-risk and high-reward research. Horack’s team studies bioastronautics and aims to provide the opportunity for a case study to use dust, a waste product generated in all human-occupied spacecraft, as a resource to support long-duration missions in and beyond low-Earth orbit and build toward creation of a bioastronautics center on campus.  

Professor Vladimir Kogan, political science, continues to analyze the effect of the pandemic on learning in “Student Achievement and Learning Acceleration on Spring 2024 Ohio State Tests,” a report for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. He found that as of spring 2024, the performance of Ohio students in English language arts has mostly recovered to levels seen before the start of the pandemic (with the exception of eighth grade) and exceeds pre-pandemic achievement in several grades.

For the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Professor Stéphane Lavertu published “The Impact of Increasing Funding for High-Performing Ohio Charter Schools: The Quality Community School Support Fund, 2019-23.” It finds positive results: Additional state dollars have allowed charters to boost their teachers’ salaries, reduced staffing turnover and driven student learning gains.

“‘We Expected a Revolution and Got a Slow Burn’: Microfoundations of Institutional Change in the Community Foundation Field,” research by Associate Professor Megan LePere-Schloop published in Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, uses a simultaneous qualitative mixed methods design to describe organizational paths to community leadership while considering field-level aspiration toward such change. She and her colleagues find that change, even amid field-level pressures, unfolds through localized improvisation and bricolage as community foundations adapt their work to demands in their community.

Professor Stephanie Moulton published “Inequality in High-Cost Borrowing and Unemployment Insurance Generosity in U.S. States During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in Nature Human Behavior, with results supporting theories that public benefits are inversely associated with the use of costly credit.

Assistant Professor Tasha Perdue’s research in macro-level social policy has opened a new opportunity for her. Perdue is now a member of the editorial board of Social Work Research, a predominant journal published by the Oxford University Press. She and colleagues published “Correlates of Current Methamphetamine Use and Opioid Co-Use Among Latina Women in a Low-Income Community” in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs to understand how risk profiles for methamphetamine use can inform interventions and prevention efforts to more effectively address drug-related harms. 

Assistant Professor Victor St. John published “Fortifying Physical and Psychological Wellbeing: Leveraging Capital for Resilience Against Racism and Adversity Across Racial Groups” in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. The findings underscore the need for multifaceted, context-sensitive health interventions and policies that enhance economic stability, educational opportunities and mental health services, while strengthening social and spiritual support systems to build resilience and mitigate the adverse health effects of these adversities.

Assistant Professor Long Tran’s analysis, “Which Trust Matters and to Whom in Cross-Sector Collaboration? Evidence From the Local Level in the Middle East,” published in International Public Management Journal, offers evidence of the importance of trust as well as notable cross-sectoral heterogeneity in a developing country in the Middle East, a setting that is seldom the focus of research on trust in collaboration.

Professor Caroline Wagner’s recent publications include “Science and the Nation-State: What China’s Experience Reveals About the Role of Policy in Science” in Science and Public Policy and “Developing an Index of National Research Capacity” in Quantitative Science Studies. In the latter, policymakers and analysts may find useful feedback from her approach to quantifying national research strength.

Professor Bruce Weinberg, economics, and co-authors published “How to Track the Economic Impact of Public Investments in AI” in the journal Nature, finding that national statistics systems should recognize the researchers whose ideas drive artificial-intelligence applications, not just machines and factory outputs.

Keep up with Glenn College faculty publications and reports on the Research and Impact web page.

Read the latest edition of Public Address, the Glenn College magazine.