Welcome!

I'm currently the department chair of the Department of Political Science at Middle Georgia State University and an associate professor of political science, straddling the worlds of academic administration and teaching faculty.

Middle Georgia State University is a public, master's granting institution with five physical campuses (three part-residential; two commuter-only) serving the 18-county region of central Georgia, including the anchor cities of Macon and Warner Robins.

My administrative role involves running a department including around a dozen full-time and part-time faculty members in political science. My responsibilities include hiring full-time and part-time faculty, performing faculty evaluations and performance reviews, recommending merit adjustments for full-time faculty, class scheduling, strategic planning, curriculum design, program assessment, and student advising.

My major research interests are in American and comparative public opinion and political behavior (voting and political participation); I have secondary research interests in legislative politics and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). My recent projects have included investigating the efficacy of open educational resources, examining citizens' responses to Congressional redistricting, and developing a deeper understanding of regional identity among residents of the American South.

I currently teach courses in American and comparative politics; I also have extensive experience teaching social science research methods, particularly at the undergraduate level.