• How did you select your graduate school and how did it prepare you for your career?
• Work or internship experience during graduate school
• What was the most important or useful course you took in the MPA/MPP?
• Were you a Presidential Management Intern?
• What has been your career path since graduating? What do you want to be doing in 5 years?
• What is the most exciting and/or interesting aspect of your current job?
• Do you feel your MPA/MPP is helping you to “make a difference?” How?
• What advice, if any, would you give to an undergraduate thinking about going for an MPA/MPP?

How did you select your graduate school and how did it prepare you for your career?

> While I attended the University of Houston as an undergraduate, I became interested in working in local government in the Houston area for my career. When I discovered that UH had a public administration program with a stated objective of being closely tied to local government in the area, I decided to stay in Houston for graduate school.

Any work or internship experience during graduate school?

> I held part-time internships with Dean of Students office for one semester and for a year in the Office of the City Controller of the City of Houston. While in the City Controller’s Office, I was allowed to work on assignments that overlapped with my course requirements. For example, I wrote a major paper for my Urban History class on the city’s annexation policies. In a related assignment, I performed research for the City Controller on new EPA legislation that was to require the city to modernize small wastewater treatment plants annexed as part of the city’s largest annexation completed in 1956. I also worked on constituent questions and correspondence, on research of the city’s financial history using published financial reports and city records, as well as research on subsidence issues that affected growth and infrastructure planning for the city. 

What was the most important or useful course you took in the MPA/MPP?

> The most useful course I took was in program evaluation and assessment. The course focused on application performance measurement and standard research design principles to municipal services. This put me on what was then the cutting edge of urban management in the area, and gave me some useful skills that others working city government at the time did not possess.

Were you a Presidential Management Intern?

> No.

What has been your career path since graduating? What do you want to be doing in 5 years?

> I have worked in local government since 1974, primarily in financial management. I have served a total of over eight years as the Budget Director for the cities of Houston, Shreveport, Louisiana and Pasadena. I spent nine years as the chief financial officer for the City of Houston’s Housing and Community Development Department with direct responsibility for budgeting, record keeping and reporting of over $70 million in projects implemented each fiscal year. I have been involved in projects and had direct administrative responsibilities that have equipped me with people and project management skills. I have written policies and procedures, directed and managed forensic and regular audits of both a management and financial nature, managed and designed information systems projects, managed and designed health benefit plans, and developed a number of financial forecasting models. I have always been able to carve a niche for myself using skills gained primarily in budget work.

While the City of Houston Budget Director during the mid 1980’s, I was asked to give guest lectures to MPA classes at UH. This grew into a long term teaching position at UH where I have been teaching public budgeting since 1988 as an adjunct professor.

What is the most exciting and/or interesting aspect of your current job?

> Pasadena is the fifteenth largest city in Texas, with a resilient diversified economy and a growing, changing population. I serve a new Mayor elected in 2001 to a four-year term who can serve a second consecutive four-year term if reelected by the voters. The city elected Mayor John Manlove with sixty percent of the vote in a primary election of five candidates, including one previous mayor who only polled eighteen percent of the vote. I led the preparation of the City’s first formal budget document last year, and formulated the first ever Capital Improvement Plan. The CIP was embraced by the voters in a resounding approval of six bond propositions based on the CIP in September 2002. We were rewarded with the upgrade of the City’s bond rating by one of the three bond rating agencies, Fitch, a year before such an upgrade was expected. We have attracted a skilled, experienced management team, and our goal is to become the best-managed city in the country. We have the time and requisite public support to improve city services and the city’s image, and we are well on our way. 

Do you feel your MPA/MPP is helping you to “make a difference?” How?

> Throughout my career, I have endeavored to leave every organization better than I found it. This orientation came from a central concept I garnered during graduate school, better known as the “biological” paradigm. This concept is that organizations tend to behave like living organisms, adapting to their environment and learning survival skills. An organization must develop and change in order to adapt, and educated MPA graduates that understand the peculiar nature of government are uniquely suited to facilitate this change process. I believe that I have left every organization better than I found it, and that I could not have accomplished this as easily with another academic degree.

What advice, if any, would you give to an undergraduate thinking about going for an MPA/MPP?

> The MPA degree is an excellent preparation for a career in the government or not-for-profit sector. Management issues, organizing principles, financial planning, and political factors make government and the not-for-profit sector different from the private sector. The same techniques used in the private sector are not directly applicable to the public sector. Government cannot be run like a business. It must be run like a government, and that can be accomplished after the challenge is fully understood. Public sector management is harder than private sector management in many ways because of the absence of the guiding hand of the market. Formulaic solutions, pat answers, and external forces are often unavailable to explain and/or serve as direction for the public sector. MPA students are trained to develop and rely on a combination of knowledge, skills, and understanding to achieve the high levels of performance required today.