by Michael Craw, MPA Director

June 8, 2020

On May 30th, the MPA program and the Evergreen chapter of the American Society for Public Administration hosted this year’s MPA Spring Symposium with Dr. Charles Menifield, Dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University — Newark. Dr. Menifield’s webinar, titled “Pandemic Planning in the U.S.: An Examination of COVID-19 Data”, documented important variations in national, state, and local responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as significant racial disparities that have emerged in who is affected by the disease. His talk drew particularly on the ACAPS Government Measures dataset compiled at the University of Copenhagen, which collects information on government policy responses to Covid-19. Dr. Menifield is noted for his research in financial management, minority politics, and public administration education, and is the author of a well-known public budgeting textbook, The Basics of Public Budgeting and Financial Management: A Handbook For Academics And Practitioner.