DPA Program Faculty
Faculty listed below are presently serving on our program committee. Other affiliated faculty are available to teach and to serve on student committees.
Beverly Bunch
B.S. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, M.P.A. Syracuse University, Ph.D. Carnegie-Mellon University.
Research interests: state and local government budgeting and financial management, intergovernmental relations, and policy analysis.
Mark Edgar
Mark Edgar is assistant professor of Public Health. His past positions include director of assessment and planning at the Illinois Public Health Institute, senior research associate at St. Louis University School of Public Health, researcher at SIU School of Medicine, director of epidemiology at the Adams County Health Department, and adjunct faculty member at UIS and Quincy University. His research has been published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice and Public Health Reports. Edgar received his Ph.D. in Public Health from St. Louis University.
Kim Furumoto
Kim Benita Furumoto (Assistant Professor in the Legal Studies Department and the Institute for Legal, Legislative and Policy Studies) received her J.D. and Ph.D. in the College of Law and the School of Justice Studies at Arizona State University in 2006. She joined the faculty at UIS in 2007, after a year-long Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her current scholarly projects include an edited volume on race theory and deconstruction, and an article that examines early conceptions of race in the juridical-theological foundations of modern international law. She is also working on a book manuscript based on her dissertation, “Racial Juris-Fiction: Federal Indian Law from the Discovery Doctrine to Allotment.” She teaches various legal studies courses that range from jurisprudence and theories of justice to legal research and citation. Her areas of interest include federal Indian law, civil rights law, environmental law, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and existential philosophy.
Jay Gilliam
Jay Gilliam is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice, joins UIS after three years on the faculty in the Department of Criminology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Gilliam's research interests include the relationship among drugs, alcohol, and crime; ecological factors of crime; and issues of juvenile justice. His work has been published in the journal Deviant Behavior and he has made numerous presentations at national academic conferences. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oklahoma in 2006.
Alexis Halley
Alexis Halley holds M.P.A. and D.P.A. degrees in Public Administration from the University of Southern California, and a Master of Science in Educational Research and B.S. in Psychology and Government from The Florida State University. Her research, professional interests and publications are in policy design, implementation, and evaluation, executive leadership, boundary theory, and the relationship between public administration and community.
Dr. Halley is the founding co-director of the John C. Stennis Congressional Staff Fellows Program and is a “pracademic” with federal, state, regional, and county government experience. She has taught at George Washington University, Cal State East Bay, Cardean University (Unext.com), and Keller Graduate School of Management. Her doctoral dissertation received the Reining Award for Best Dissertation.
She is the co-editor of Who Makes Public Policy: The Struggle for Control between Congress and the Executive (Chatham House, 1994), and recent co-author of “The Paradoxical Status of Planning and Time in Today’s Public Environment,” International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior (2008).
Sharron Lafollette
Sharron LaFollette, Ph.D. is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Public Health at University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS) with a joint faculty appointment in the Institute for Legal and Policy Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Toxicology from Oregon State University. Prior to joining academia, she spent eight years in Illinois government conducting multi-media risk assessments and providing risk communication and educational programs for physicians, public health professionals, and the general public. She taught and was director of the Environmental Health Program at Illinois State University for eight years before coming to UIS , and was Chair of the Department of Environmental Health prior to her current appointment. She teaches Environmental Toxicology; Environmental Risk Assessment sequence (leads to Certificate of Risk Assessment); Risk Management and Communication; and Environmental Policy: Air Quality, Solid and Hazardous Waste Technology and Policy , and Public Policy at the graduate level. She is currently the Graduate Chair of the National Environmental Health Science & Protection Accreditation Council (EHAC) , past-president of EHAC past-president of the Association of Environmental Health Academic Programs, and past-president of the Illinois Environmental Health Association. Her research and consulting are in risk evaluation, risk communication, workforce development, indoor air quality impact on health, and radon levels related to building dynamics. She has over 28 years experience in conference and workshop planning and delivery in the multidisciplinary area of environmental health.
Will Miller
Will Miller, an associate professor and chair of Public Administration, was the founding director of the doctoral program in public policy at the University of Arkansas. He has also worked as a policy analyst for St. Louis University and with numerous community-based advocacy and service groups. His professional focus is on public policy in such areas as desegregation policy, church and state issues, citizen participation in economic development, financial ratios, equal employment, and the use of race in research. His work has appeared in Public Administration Review, American Review of Public Administration, Women and Politics, State and Local Government Review, and The American Journal of Political Science. He holds an M. Div. from Eden Theological Seminary and earned a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from St. Louis University in 1991.
Patrick Mullen
Ph.D., 2006, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Public Administration and Policy. Research/Professional Interests: Information technology and public administration, digital government and individual privacy, program evaluation, public financial management.
Jason A. Pierceson
Professor Pierceson holds a B.A. in History from Knox College and a Ph.D. in Politics from Brandeis University and has been teaching at UIS since the fall of 2005. His teaching and research focuses on public law, the legal and political issues relating to sexuality, and political theory. He is the author of Courts, Liberalism, and Rights: Gay Law and Politics in the United States and Canada published by Temple University Press in 2005. Professor Pierceson also teaches in the Legal Studies program at UIS. Courses taught include: Law and Inequality, Law and Society, Seminar in Law and Politics, American Constitution and Constitutional Law, American Political Thought, and Introduction to Political Philosophy.
John Transu
Professor Transu is assistant professor of Political Studies with an appointment in the Institute for Legal, Legislative, and Policy Studies, was an assistant professor of Political Science at Duke University before coming to UIS. His research primarily involves social identity, public opinion, political participation, and the relationships between political events and financial markets. His research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Political Psychology, Annual Review of Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Public Opinion Quarterly. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science with an interdisciplinary minor in Political Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 2001.
Pinky Wassenberg
B.A. in Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; J.D., Lewis & Clark Law School; M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science, Washington State University.
Research interests: American constitutional law, the law of military conflict, environmental law, public policy (implementation and evaluation), implementation of community corrections programs, and issues in the philosophy of social science.
