2023 New Commissioners Welcomed!
The Commission on Peer Review and Accreditation (COPRA), under the leadership of the 2023-2024 Chair, Dr. Gloria Billingsley, is honored to welcome six new Commissioners serving terms from 2023-2026. Learn more about the members recently joining the Commission below:
Lori Brainard, Commissioner, 2023-2026
Dr. Lori Brainard is a Professor at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at George Washington University. A scholar of civic engagement and digital democracy, her work has appeared in journals in public administration, nonprofit management, and communications. She sits on the editorial boards of Administration & Society, American Review of Public Administration, and Administrative Theory & Praxis. Dr. Brainard has won awards for both research and teaching, including NASPAA’s Social Justice Curriculum Award. She was MPA Program Director for nearly ten years and in service to NASPAA she has accepted invitations to sit on panels, including for the NASPAA Next workshop, design and deliver a half-day workshop for new program directors at the annual conference, serve as an awards judge, and sit on the Data Committee and the Dissertation Awards Committee
Madinah Hamidullah, Commissioner, 2023-2026
Madinah F. Hamidullah, Ph.D. is a Professor and Director of the Master of Public Administration program at Kennesaw State University. Her major research areas are public and nonprofit administration leadership and management, specifically how it applies to human resource management practices and policies. She is developing a research focus on women’s organizations, and their collective impact in philanthropy, service, and professional development. Hamidullah is deeply committed to being an educator and a scholar. She teaches in areas of public and nonprofit management, human resource administration, leadership, equity and diversity, and service/community engaged learning.
Ultimately, she wants her research to help public and nonprofit managers and leaders build more efficient, equitable and effective organizations. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility are critical aspects of her research, teaching, and overall life focus. Products of this research have appeared in Public Management Review, Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing, and the American Review of Public Administration. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance and Political Science and Master of Public Administration degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. And received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Public Administration from the University of Georgia.
Meghna Sabharwal, Commissioner, 2023-2026
Meghna Sabharwal is a professor in the public and nonprofit management program at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). Her extensive research portfolio centers around public human resources management with a particular focus on issues such as workforce diversity, equity and inclusion, comparative human resources, and high skilled immigration. Over the course of her career, she has authored three books and more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, earning five best paper awards in the process. Sabharwal has presented at over 250 national and international conferences and invited talks. She has been honored with numerous prestigious awards for her contributions to the field of public administration, including NASPAA's Willian Duncombe Excellence in Doctoral Education Award, COMPA's Sylvester Murray Mentoring Award, and most recently, the President's Teaching Excellence Award for Graduate/Professional Instruction at UTD. In 2021, she was awarded the Outstanding Public Human Resource scholar award by The Section on Personnel Administration and Labor Relations (SPALR), American Society of Public Administration (ASPA). She has chaired three sections of ASPA, Section on International and Comparative Administration (SICA), Section of Women in Public Administration and the South Asian Section of Public Administration (SASPA), which she co-founded. She serves on editorial boards of leading public administration journals and is the Associate Editor of the Review of Public Personnel Administration and Public Integrity.
Shahjahan Bhuiyan, Commissioner, 2023-2026
Shahjahan Bhuiyan is a Professor of Public Administration and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Administration at The American University in Cairo’s (AUC) School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP). Bhuiyan is former Chair of AUC’s Department of Public Policy and Administration. Prior to joining AUC, he served as Dean of the College of Social Sciences at KIMEP University, Almaty, Kazakhstan. He was a Visiting Research Fellow in the Oxford Institute of Population Aging at Oxford University (2010) and the Inaugural Democratic Governance Fellow in UNDP’s Oslo Governance Center (2013). Bhuiyan served on NASPAA’s Standards Committee from 2017 to 2022. He is the recipient of the 2023 Transition and Developing Economies Award by the International Public Policy Association (IPPA). He is an Associate Editor of Public Organization Review, and recently edited a book entitled Public Administration in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2023).
Mary Bruce, Commissioner, 2023-2026
Dr. Mary D. Bruce is a full professor and a global educator who leads the public administration program and the not-for-profit and social entrepreneurship concentration at Governors State University in Illinois. Dr. Bruce’s publications center around four main research streams: public policy concerns, disaster readiness, human resource management, and framing in media, policy, and politics. She has also published collaboratively on research that investigates leadership and stress as well as workplace violence policies. Dr. Bruce teaches strategic planning and human resource management both in-person and online. She is the chair of strategic planning efforts and a board member on the Consortium for International Management, Policy. Dr. Bruce traveled to China with graduate students from Governors State University’s College of Business and Public Administration. She served as a visiting professor at the Makerere University School of Business in Kampala, Uganda. She has presented research papers in the United States, Senegal, Uganda, Namibia, and Zambia. Dr. Bruce was awarded a certificate of appreciation for exemplary service for her role in chairing the Pi Alpha Alpha Steering Committee/The Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) from 2019-2022.
Calvin Johnson, Commissioner, 2023-2026
Calvin C. Johnson, Ph.D., is a senior executive at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development where he serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research, Evaluation and Monitoring within the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R).
Dr. Johnson serves as one of the principal advisors to HUD leadership on research, demonstration, and evaluation activities and oversees a broad evaluation portfolio to include projects exploring the impact of housing on non-housing outcomes – economic self-sufficiency, health and wellness, educational achievement, and public safety. Additionally, his portfolio includes demonstrations, evaluations, and research on housing discrimination, homelessness, aging in place, disaster resilience/recovery, community planning and development, and building science and technology.
He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration where he serves as a member of the standing panel on social equity in governance – the panel responsible for leading the performance of the Academy’s social equity agenda as well as co-sponsoring the Academy’s Annual Social Equity Leadership Conference.
He has served in research, evaluation, and policy positions at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, The University of Pennsylvania, The Urban Institute, and with the Executive Office of the Mayor of the District of Columbia. In these positions, he was responsible for the development of multisectoral responses to crime and delinquency, and the evaluation of crime control policies, community policing practices, community violence interventions, and place-based preventive interventions to combat crime and delinquency.
He enjoys teaching and is a part-time Visiting Professor of Practice in the Master of Public Administration program at Bowie State University – the oldest HBCU in the state of Maryland. He is committed to increasing the pipeline of people of color pursuing careers in policy and program evaluation.