Executive Education course helps Crane employees earn advanced degrees

Executive Education helps organizations invest in employees through MPA program

Posted on June 3, 2019 by Leslie Wells

Aerial shot of Naval Surface Warfare Center-Crane Division — IU Executive Education at the O’Neill School works with Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center to help employees further their education through Executive Public Management Certificate and Executive Masters of Public Affairs programs. Photo courtesy: Naval Surface Warfare Center-Crane Division.

In May 2023, 22 employees of the Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center received their Executive Master of Public Affairs degrees from Indiana University Executive Education at the O’Neill School. The graduates spent more than two years working toward this goal and are the latest in a long line of Crane employees to earn their degrees through this unique program.

What makes this path to an advanced degree so different than many others?

“The leadership of Executive Education at O’Neill is very customer-focused,” says Angie Lewis, division technical director at Crane. “They want to understand what’s going on within our environment. They’ve been willing to adapt certain parts of the lessons and update and transform portions of their curriculum to stay current with our challenges and needs. That makes this program especially valuable.”

Executive Education has offered graduate programs for NWSC Crane for more than 30 years. The Executive Public Management Certificate and EMPA programs are Crane’s largest and longest-lasting investment in employee education. Crane covers all costs of the program for employees and has done so for more than 20 years.

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Crowdfunding the arts

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Leslie Wells

This blog is the result of a research partnership between the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts: the Arts, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation (AEI) Lab.

My name is Michael Weigel and I’m a first-year graduate student at the O’Neill School working on my Master of Policy Analysis. When not working on class projects, I serve as a graduate research assistant for Dr. Doug Noonan as part of the AEI Lab. My current focus is on artistic and creative projects financed through crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter. I’d love to share some of my initial insights.

For this analysis, our team is utilizing a database with information on every arts-related Kickstarter project hosted on the platform since its founding in 2009 up to October 2016. Each listing contains information on the genre and subgenre of the project, the amount of money requested and pledged, the number of backers, location of origin, and more.

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The search is on for IUPUI’s next queen bee

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Leslie Wells

A fascination with bees and an on-campus internship helped create the Urban Beekeepers at IUPUI club. But to keep it going, the club needs a new leader—fast. Its current leader, Melissa Kidulas, is graduating and she needs a new queen (or king) bee to run the club.

Melissa Kidulas

Kidulas, who is earning her O’Neill degree in Sustainable Management and Policy, started the club in 2017 as part of a project for IUPUI’s Office of Sustainability. The university beehives and the campus gardens already existed. Dr. Steven Blanchard, an associate professor with the IU School of Dentistry, established the campus hives thanks to a Greening IUPUI grant.

But Kidulas had a new goal: help IUPUI gain a Bee Campus accreditation.

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Students, faculty honored at 2019 O’Neill Awards luncheon

Posted on May 2, 2019 by Leslie Wells

Congratulations to award recipients from the annual O’Neill Awards luncheon. The celebration honors the school’s top students in criminal justice and public affairs, alongside several faculty members.

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O’Neill’s Dena Carson honored for work on youth gangs

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Leslie Wells

For nearly a decade, O’Neill assistant professor Dena Carson has dedicated her research career to examining youth gangs. Her commitment to the field was recently recognized by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Carson received the group’s Tory J. Caeti Memorial Award, honoring the next generation of juvenile justice and delinquency scholars who contribute to a better understanding of issues in their field.

“Dr. Carson is well-rounded in her contributions to research, scholarship, and service,” says Jen Peck, Ph.D., award committee member and assistant criminal justice professor at the University of Central Florida. “Her research agenda is innovative, clear, consistent, substantive, programmatic, policy-related, and fits squarely within juvenile justice and related issues.”

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