Governing/Managing Public and Civic Affairs

Dustin Brown

Adjunct Assistant Professor and Deputy Assistant Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget

Dustin Brown is the deputy assistant director for management at the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President.

He is a member of the Senior Executive Service and is the career lead for the federal government's efforts to improve government effectiveness and efficiency through the president's management agenda. Brown helps lead the OMB's Office of Performance and Personnel Management, which is responsible for leading several government-wide initiatives that require coordination across agencies; improving the federal government's mission performance outcomes; and developing federal personnel policies.

Brown helps lead a number of interagency efforts, including improving the infrastructure permitting process, the security clearance process, shifting from low-value to high-value work, improving customer experience and improving program performance. In 2010, he worked with Congress to design and enact the federal government's performance framework through the Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act.

He has represented the United States on the OECD Public Governance Committee since 2010, and was elected to become its chair in 2018. Brown is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, a visiting senior fellow at the Volcker Alliance and a visiting fellow of practice at Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government.

Brown joined OMB's housing branch in August 2001, and worked in OMB's International Affairs Division and as the OMB director's special assistant for policy. He has a master's in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and has a bachelor's degree from Manchester University in Indiana. He also received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Quito, Ecuador.

Donald F. Kettl

Donald Kettl specializes in public management and public policy. He previously served as dean in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Volcker Alliance, the Brookings Institution and the Partnership for Public Service. He has authored or edited numerous books, including The Divided States of America: Why Federalism Doesn't Work (2020); Can Governments Earn Our Trust? (2017); Little Bites of Big Data for Public Policy (2017); The Politics of the Administrative Process (7th edition, 2017); Escaping Jurassic Government: Restoring America's Lost Commitment to Competence (2016); System Under Stress: The Challenge to 21st Century American Democracy Homeland Security and American Politics (2014); The Next Government of the United States: Why Our Institutions Fail Us and How to Fix Them (2008); and The Global Public Management Revolution (2005).

He has received three lifetime achievement awards: the American Political Science Association's John Gaus Award, the Warner W. Stockberger Achievement Award of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources, and the Donald C. Stone Award of the American Society for Public Administration.

Dr. Kettl has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration for The Transformation of Governance (2002); and System Under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics (2005). His book, Escaping Jurassic Government: How to Recover America's Lost Commitment to Competence, won the 2016 award for book of the year from the American Society for Public Administration.

Dr. Kettl has consulted for government organizations at all levels, including most recently the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He has appeared frequently in national and international media. He has chaired two gubernatorial blue-ribbon commissions for the Wisconsin state government — one on campaign finance reform and the other on government structure and finance.

Martin J. Luby

Associate Professor of Public Affairs

Martin J. Luby held academic positions at University of Illinois, DePaul University and Ohio State University before joining The University of Texas at Austin faculty as an associate professor of public affairs. His teaching and research broadly focuses on public finance with an emphasis in public financial management. Much of Dr. Luby's research has focused on the municipal securities market and the use of debt finance by state and local governments. He has published on innovative government financial instruments, federal financing techniques, regulation of the municipal securities market and the role of financial intermediaries in state and local government financings. Dr. Luby has extensive banking, consultant and advisory experience with many state and local governments as well as the federal government. Dr. Luby is a fellow to the Lynn F. Anderson Professorship in Public Financial Management. 

Angela Evans

Dean Emeritus

Angela Evans was dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs from 2016 to 2020. She joined the School as a professor of practice in 2009 after 40 years in public service to the U.S. Congress, including 15 as the deputy director of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a legislative branch agency that provides nonpartisan research and public policy analysis to Congress.

During her tenure, the LBJ School's U.S. News and World Report ranking rose from 14 to 8. She strengthened its commitment to producing dynamic, actionable research to inform real-world policymaking; attracting and retaining the best talent to teach and engage with the School's communities; and giving diverse cohorts of students the knowledge and skills to influence and lead in the civic sector. She refreshed the School's academic programming, expanded its intellectual leadership; streamlined systems and operations; and raised over $57 million in funding. She was instrumental in creating three centers: the LBJ Urban Lab, the Prison and Jail Innocation Lab (PJIL) and The Impact Factory (an initiative with Dell Medical School). She championed the inauguration of the LBJ Women's Campaign School, and created leadership positions including an associate dean for students, an assistant dean for community engagement, and an assistant dean for academic strategies.

Evans's numerous teaching awards include the 2012 Texas Exes teaching award, the most valuable class (2010 and 2012) and the most helpful professor (every year between 2010 and 2015).

Evans is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration; past president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) (2013–14); and served on the executive committee of National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Analysis (NASPAA). She is a visiting fellow with the IBM Center for the Business of Government, where she is working on reimagining public affairs education.

Sherri Greenberg

Assistant Dean for State and Local Government Engagement; Professor of Practice; Fellow of Max Sherman Chair in State and Local Government

Sherri R. Greenberg is a professor of practice and fellow of the Max Sherman Chair in State and Local Government at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and she is a professor of practice at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. Additionally, she is the LBJ School Assistant Dean for State and Local Government Engagement. She is a primary researcher for, and is Chairperson elect of, Good Systems, The University of Texas Grand Challenge regarding ethical AI. Greenberg is a member of the Board of the Austin Convention Center Enterprise. She also serves on the Austin Smart City Alliance Board of Directors, and the Austin Forum on Technology & Society Advisory Board. Previously, she was a member of the Central Health Board of Managers, and a member of the City of Austin Housing Investment Review Committee.

Greenberg has served as a senior advisor to Austin Mayor Steve Adler. She was a Texas state representative from 1991 to 2001, and she chaired the House Pensions and Investments Committee and the Select Committee on Teacher Health Insurance. She also served on the House Appropriations, Economic Development, Elections, and Science and Technology Committees. Previously, Greenberg was the City of Austin capital finance manager, and a public finance officer at Standard & Poor’s.

Her teaching and research interests include: technology policy, state and local government, housing, homelessness, transportation, healthcare, public finance, and campaigns and elections. Recently, she has had funding from the National Science Foundation, the City of Austin, UT Good Systems, the IBM Center for the Business of Government, the Cisco Foundation, Microsoft, MITRE, and the State of Texas.

Michele Deitch

Distinguished Senior Lecturer

Michele Deitch holds a joint appointment as a distinguished senior lecturer at the LBJ School and the Law School, and she directs LBJ's Prison and Jail Innovation Lab (PJIL), a policy resource center focused on the safe and humane treatment of people in custody. She is an attorney who has worked for over 35 years on criminal justice and juvenile justice policy issues with state and local government officials, corrections administrators, judges and advocates. She specializes in independent oversight of correctional institutions, prison and jail conditions, managing youth in custody, and youth in the adult criminal justice system. Deitch co-chairs the American Bar Association's Subcommittee on Correctional Oversight, and helped draft the ABA's Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners. Her publications include a report on the status of correctional oversight in the United States; a report about COVID deaths in custody in Texas; a report on COVID's effects on women in prisons and jails; and many reports on juvenile justice that have helped change the treatment of youth tried as adults.

Deitch's work has impacted public policy through legislative testimony and work with key legislators, including on Texas's Sandra Bland Act. Prior to entering academia, she served as a federal court-appointed monitor of conditions in the Texas prison system, policy director of Texas's sentencing commission, general counsel to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee, and consultant to justice system agencies around the country. Her TEDx talk, "Why are we trying kids as adults?" was named a TEDx Editor's Pick in January 2015.

Her teaching awards include being named to the 2019 Texas 10 list of the most inspiring professors at UT Austin. She has been a Soros Senior Justice Fellow, and recieved the 2019 Flame Award from the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE).

Robert H. Wilson

Mike Hogg Emeritus Professor of Urban Policy

Robert H. Wilson was a visiting professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco (Recife, Brazil) prior to joining the LBJ School in 1979. He has held a number of visiting positions including the Visiting International Philips Professorship at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (São Paulo, Brazil), the Fulbright/FLAD Chair in Knowledge Management Policies at the Advanced Technical Institute (Lisbon, Portugal) and Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, DC). Wilson has held various administrative positions at The University of Texas at Austin including interim dean, associate dean for academic affairs and research, and director of the Policy Research Institute at the LBJ School; director of the Brazil Center at the Institute of Latin American Studies; and director of the Urban Issues Program. He has collaborated on projects with the United Nations Development Program, U.N.-Habitat, the Organization of American States, the Urban Institute, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Congressional Research Service, the Fulbright Commission, the Ford Foundation, the National Association of Counties, the Texas Legislative Education Board, the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation, PeopleFund, the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service and the Banco de Desenvolvimento do Nordeste and SUDENE (Brazil). He was inducted into the National Order of the Southern Cross with the rank of commander by the president of Brazil.

Paul Stekler

Wofford Denius Chair in Entertainment Studies; Professor of Public Affairs and Radio-Television-Film

Paul Stekler is an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and founder of the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. His film work includes "George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire," "Last Man Standing: Politics, Texas Style," two segments of the "Eyes on the Prize II" series on the history of civil rights, "Last Stand at Little Big Horn" (broadcast as part of PBS's series "The American Experience"), "Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics" (broadcast on PBS's "P.O.V." series) and "Getting Back to Abnormal." His films have won two Peabody Awards, three duPont-Columbia University Journalism Awards, three Emmy Awards and a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Dr. Stekler holds a doctorate in government from Harvard University, where his work focused on Southern politics. He previously worked as a political pollster in Louisiana while teaching at Tulane University. His writing has appeared in the Texas Observer, Texas Monthly and the International Documentary Association's magazine, among other places, and in the book, Killing Custer, co-written with novelist James Welch. He was named film school Mentor of the Year in 2014 by Variety.

Dr. Stekler retired from The University of Texas at Austin in 2022. His body of work is available online at paulstekler.com.

William Spelman

Emeritus Professor of Public Affairs

An urban policy specialist, William Spelman holds a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He has a background in operations research and evaluation and in local government law, administration and finance. He serviced on the Austin City Council from 1997 to 2000 and from 2009 to 2015.

Formerly associated with the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, DC, Dr. Spelman has developed and evaluated police programs aimed at the apprehension, deterrence and rehabilitation of repeat offenders and solving neighborhood crime and disorder problems. Two of his programs, the Baltimore County (Maryland) Citizen Oriented Police Enforcement program and the Newport News (Virginia) Problem-Oriented Policing program, have been selected as finalists for the Ford Foundation's prestigious Innovations Awards. His numerous publications focus on criminal justice policies, mainly in the areas of community crime prevention, repeat offenders and neighborhood problem solving.

Victoria E. Rodriguez

Ashbel Smith Professor Emeritus

Victoria E. Rodríguez was vice provost and dean of graduate studies at The University of Texas at Austin from 2002 to 2012, and has served as director of the Ph.D. program at the LBJ School (2013–21). She taught courses in policy development, women in politics and public policy, and theory and philosophy of public policy.

Prior to joining UT Austin in 1991, Dr. Rodríguez held teaching positions at the University of California, San Diego and The University of Texas at El Paso. She was also a research associate at the University of Cambridge and served as a consultant for the World Bank. Her scholarly work has focused on decentralization, governance and democratization in Mexico. In addition to her publications on Mexican politics and public policy, Dr. Rodríguez is known for her work and pathbreaking research on women in Mexican politics. In 2001 Dr. Rodríguez received jointly with Professor Peter Ward the Ohtli Medal, the highest honor granted by the Mexican government outside Mexico.

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