The evolution of a university-based public service model that integrates leadership, applied research, and regional engagement in Appalachian Ohio

Becoming the Voinovich School chronicles the evolution of Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service, a pioneering institution that blends academic rigor with hands-on public engagement. Founded on the vision of political scientist Mark Weinberg and inspired by the leadership philosophy of former US senator and Ohio governor George V. Voinovich, the school has become a national model for university-based public service.

From its modest beginnings in 1976—when Weinberg was hired to build a public administration program from scratch—the school has grown into a dynamic “do tank” serving the Appalachian Ohio region and beyond. Early initiatives like the Institute for Local Government Administration and Rural Development laid the groundwork for a new kind of academic center: one that connects faculty expertise with real-world problem-solving. Through applied research, GIS analysis, leadership training, and program evaluation, the school has become a trusted convener and catalyst for change.

The Voinovich School’s mission spans five key sectors: economic development, community development, education and child wellness, environmental restoration, and health and well-being. Its work is rooted in a commitment to empowering communities, especially those facing the economic and health challenges of postindustrial Appalachia. By pairing grant-funded projects with experiential education, the school has created opportunities for students to engage directly with pressing public issues while building leadership capacity across the region.

In 2007, the center was formally renamed the Voinovich School, reflecting its expanded scope and growing impact. Over the next decade, it launched new graduate programs, raised its national ranking, and became the educational partner for the Ohio Economic Development Institute. Today, the school continues to leverage state and federal funding, private-sector partnerships, and alumni networks to address complex challenges with innovative, community-driven solutions.

This book offers a compelling account of how one university unit transformed public service education—and how its legacy continues to shape leadership and policy in and beyond Ohio.

The new edition of Cops, Teachers, Counselors furthers the exploration of forces that shape the contours of frontline work. This line of inquiry is at the heart of street-level bureaucracy research, a field of study cutting across disciplines, including public administration, political science, social work, law and society, education, and criminal justice. The oft-cited 2003 edition pioneered a qualitative method of inquiry using workers’ own voices and storytelling about fairness in the delivery of services. This NSF-supported field research reveals the ways workers engage in moral judgments, more than implementing laws and policies, to account for their decisions and actions. 

The new edition wraps an expanded framing around the original chapters, while maintaining a lively, approachable presentation style. It takes on a more enriched perspective of legality than the original, while retaining a focus on frontline work as a powerful source of cultural ordering. In addition to examining workers’ stories of encounters, attention is given to the agency of the governed during interactional moments, the power dynamics in play during both interpersonal and group encounters, and patterns of practice that converge across distinctive service domains. The original edition describes two narratives that shape frontline workers’ decisional judgments and the interplay between legality and morality: the state-agent and citizen-agent narratives. This edition adds the knowledge-agent narrative that stresses the importance of professional and field learning to decisional judgments.
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The book examines routine encounters of cops, teachers, and counselors with diverse publics when questions of justice and fairness are at play. This new edition speaks to contemporary issues at a time when frontline workers gained broad recognition for their heroic contributions to communities during the Covid 19 pandemic, as well as sustained condemnation for their embodiment of the brutal expression of racialized state power in police actions. The authors conclude with a focus on the significance of place and trust in building social inclusion on the frontlines of public service.   

Public-service executives, both elected and appointed within the public and nonprofit sectors, are retiring at record levels, and the number of Americans reaching age sixty-five annually will continue to rise over the next decade and is expected to surpass four million in 2020. Finding qualified, motivated leaders to fill vital public-service positions will challenge the public and nonprofit sectors.

Unfortunately, recent studies show that few proactive steps are being taken by public-service organizations to plan for the next generation. Passing the Torch: Planning for the Next Generation of Public-Service Leaders provides an outline for those who will be facing and managing these looming changes.

In this valuable guide, the factors that influence selection of a career in public service are explored through the authors’ years of experience as leaders in public-service organizations and through interviews with other public-service professionals. Passing the Torch will be essential for leaders of nonprofit organizations, university faculty, researchers in the field of nonprofit management, and students in nonprofit management courses.

First published in 1980, Street-Level Bureaucracy received critical acclaim for its insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs. Three decades later, the need to bolster the availability and effectiveness of healthcare, social services, education, and law enforcement is as urgent as ever. In this thirtieth anniversary expanded edition, Michael Lipsky revisits the territory he mapped out in the first edition to reflect on significant policy developments over the last several decades. Despite the difficulties of managing these front-line workers, he shows how street-level bureaucracies can be and regularly are brought into line with public purposes. Street-level bureaucrats—from teachers and police officers to social workers and legal-aid lawyers—interact directly with the public and so represent the frontlines of government policy. In Street-Level Bureaucracy, Lipsky argues that these relatively low-level public service employees labor under huge caseloads, ambiguous agency goals, and inadequate resources. When combined with substantial discretionary authority and the requirement to interpret policy on a case-by-case basis, the difference between government policy in theory and policy in practice can be substantial and troubling. The core dilemma of street-level bureaucrats is that they are supposed to help people or make decisions about them on the basis of individual cases, yet the structure of their jobs makes this impossible. Instead, they are forced to adopt practices such as rationing resources, screening applicants for qualities their organizations favor, "rubberstamping" applications, and routinizing client interactions by imposing the uniformities of mass processing on situations requiring human responsiveness. Occasionally, such strategies work out in favor of the client. But the cumulative effect of street-level decisions made on the basis of routines and simplifications about clients can reroute the intended direction of policy, undermining citizens' expectations of evenhanded treatment. This seminal, award-winning study tells a cautionary tale of how decisions made by overburdened workers translate into ad-hoc policy adaptations that impact peoples' lives and life opportunities. Lipsky maintains, however, that these problems are not insurmountable. Over the years, public managers have developed ways to bring street-level performance more in line with agency goals. This expanded edition of Street-Level Bureaucracy underscores that, despite its challenging nature, street-level work can be made to conform to higher expectations of public service.

Street-Level Bureaucracy is an insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs.