Distinguished Practitioner Professors Bring the Real World into the Classroom

by Anne Reynolds

Distinguished Practitioner Professors Bring the Real World into the Classroom

It is the real estate cliché about what really matters: “location, location, location!” One of the undeniable benefits of George Mason University is the excellent physical placement of its campuses. Close to Washington, D.C., and seated in some of the most populous and diverse counties in Virginia, the Fairfax, Arlington, and Prince William Campuses are greatly rewarded by their surroundings.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences has capitalized on being in the heart of the action by introducing its students to the real-world expertise of many successful local and national players. These practitioners in residence enrich the educational experience of the college’s students by bringing a wealth of real-world knowledge directly into the classroom, inspiring their classes to look forward to see the differences that they, too, will make in the world.

Laurie Robinson is an excellent example. One of Mason’s Clarence J. Robinson Professors, Robinson has a wealth of national criminal justice policy experience. She has served twice as the assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, the arm of the department that works with federal, state, local, and tribal justice systems to identify and implement effective crime-fighting strategies. She describes the office’s mission as the “connection of research with practice at the crossroads of the federal government with the state and local side.”

Robinson headed the Office of Justice Programs for seven years during the Clinton administration and three more years during the Obama administration. While at the agency, Robinson oversaw a significant expansion in support for crime-related research and the value of innovation in fighting crime. In between her tours at the Department of Justice, Robinson launched and directed the University of Pennsylvania’s MS program in criminology and served as a distinguished scholar at the university’s Jerry Lee Center of Criminology.

At Mason, she not only taught three classes this spring, but was the senior fellow for Mason’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy and the senior academic advisor for the center’s criminal justice policy efforts. Asked what drew her to Mason, she said it was the focus on evidence-based research, or translational criminology, in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and the nature of the Robinson Professor position, which brings with it the opportunity to teach undergraduates with an emphasis on innovation and a multidisciplinary approach.

The true benefit of Robinson’s experience is that she shares her perspective of what policy makers actually need and how to distill that information for them. “I’ve learned an enormous amount from the ‘traditional faculty,’” she says, “not just substantively, but in terms of perspective.”

Students have the opportunity to benefit from a completely different kind of expertise with the inclusion of Anthony Griffin, parent BA ’08 and MPA ’12, in Mason’s faculty. Griffin is a practitioner in residence in the Department of Public and International Affairs. He comes to Mason with a background of unparalleled experience in local government affairs. Prior to his work at Mason, he served for 20 years in the Fairfax County government; for 12 of those years, he was the county executive. Before his work in Fairfax, he served as Arlington County’s deputy county manager and city manager for the city of Falls Church.

This past spring, Griffin taught PUAD 759: Issues in Local Government Administration. The course is designed to give students an understanding of the workings of local government and teach students how to identify alternatives for resolving issues that localities face. These issues are many, and this ambitious course touched on all these concerns:

  • Fiscal matters
  • Land use questions
  • Public works
  • Transportation
  • Human services
  • Public safety
  • Administration
  • Nonmandated services such as libraries and parks
  • Economic development
  • Education
  • Regional governance and intergovernmental relations

Griffin wanted to bring to the students the complexity of the role of local government. “What I want to convey is that local government is very involved in your life, hopefully in a very positive way . . . the basic services that people enjoy are usually provided by the local sector, not the state and not the federal government. People tend to know the most about the federal government, but not who their local leaders are.”

Students in the class focused on the real challenges facing local government, presenting summaries of current events at the outset of most class meetings and working on a semester-long case study featuring an issue with which a locality is either contending or will likely be dealing with. Griffin explains that anticipating these issues is a large part of the job: “One reason why I enjoyed [public service] as much as I did was that no two days were the same. Every day, a certain amount of my day was fixed and I knew what was going to happen, but some time during the day, something would come up that I didn’t anticipate, sort of a crisis du jour, and I had to fi

At Mason, Griffin not only will be teaching classes and serving as a resource to students and the Mason community, but will contribute to Mason’s three Centers on the Public Service: the Center for Federal Management Leadership, the State and Local Government Leadership Center, and the Center on Nonprofit Management, Philanthropy, and Policy. These centers are designed to join teaching and research with real-world practice. Their academic content and theory are informed or delivered by practitioners with experience in their particular fields, and the scholarly work performed at the centers is done with the specific goal of serving and informing leaders and developing future leaders in these areas.

The college houses a number of these diverse centers, where practitioners may further their work to bring knowledge and positive change to the world at large. For instance, in July 2012, the university announced the formation of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative (E&EI), which operates from Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication (4C), which, in turn, is housed under the Department of Communication.

E&EI’s executive director is former Congressman Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 1999, and from 2005 to 2011. The initiative’s mission is to explore and promote solutions to America’s energy and climate challenges from the standpoint of conservative, market-based theories. It emphasizes assigning the true costs to competing fuel sources, rather than attacking energy challenges with expanded government, regulation, and taxes.

Inglis explains that he was intrigued by the work of Ed Maibach, a University Professor at Mason and director of 4C. Inglis had met Maibach at a conference, where Maibach had presented an analysis of American public attitudes toward global warming. Inglis found the analysis compelling and eventually agreed to operate the E&EI from the center.

Working from a university setting is a good fit, Inglis explains. The initiative is geared toward trying to reach those who identify themselves as politically conservative. He recognizes that its message is not necessarily a typical conservative viewpoint on climate change. Students, according to Inglis, understand the approach.

“They are taking economics 101, physics 101, and chemistry 101,” Inglis says. “They get it. Young conservatives don’t want to just hear the tune on the radio.”

The E&EI and 4C are only two examples of the range of centers housed in the college. Each of these centers represents ways in which the college is using research to reach out and change the world.