Nonprofit leaders enhance skills through Executive Education

Nonprofit leaders enhance their skills through Executive Education

Posted on January 21, 2019 by Leslie Wells

Group of participants for the 2018 La Porte Nonprofit Leadership Academy — Participants in the Executive Education Nonprofit Leadership Academy learn skills to better lead their organizations and help the community.

The Healthcare Foundation of La Porte knew there were skills gaps in the city’s nonprofits. Local nonprofit leaders had told them they needed more knowledge and experience to properly run their organizations and increase their impact. The Foundation searched for a solution and found it in SPEA Executive Education’s Nonprofit Leadership Academy.

The 10-month, on-location program covers practical topics designed to increase the leadership capacity of nonprofits executives. Those who complete the course receive an Executive Education Nonprofit Leadership Certificate from Indiana University.

Pastor Nate Loucks attended the Academy in La Porte. He leads the Pax Center, a nonprofit that focuses on food injustice and insecurity, runs a food pantry, provides free community gardening space and support, and hosts weekly community meals.

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Course provides students with community development experience

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Leslie Wells

SPEA graduate student Riley Sandel speaks to a group of community members gathered to discuss gentrification.

As nearly 100 people gathered in a local community room to discuss gentrification, seven graduate students from SPEA’s Public Policy Process course eagerly waited to begin the meeting. The group spent the past semester developing the topic and format of the meeting, collaborating with local organizations, and reaching out to community members impacted by or simply interested in gentrification.

Riley Sandel, a SPEA MPA student, helped organize the event. He earned his undergraduate degree in architecture, but knew he wanted to build more than skyscrapers. He wanted to build up communities.

That desire led him to SPEA to pursue a master’s degree in public affairs. The Urban Affairs concentration gives him the ideas and skills needed to address the specific challenges and opportunities found in urban areas. Sandel says this meeting and topic provided the perfect opportunity to practice those skills.

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Reducing recidivism through the hiring process

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Leslie Wells

This story was written by Jody Sundt, Sara Johnson, and Leslie Wells and was originally published in Perspectives, the Journal of the American Probation and Parole Association.

A movement is gaining momentum to shift the culture of corrections, including how probation officers manage offenders in the community (Taxman & Belenko, 2012). Rather than solely focusing on tracking compliance and sanctioning probation violations, more departments are switching to an evidence-based approach that focuses on reducing criminogenic risks and needs with proven strategies that improve public safety.

While there has been progress in training employees in these evidence-based practices (Chadwick, Dewolf, & Serin, 2015), significant challenges remain in building the organizational capacity to support the high levels of treatment fidelity needed to realize public safety goals and reach large numbers of offenders (Salisbury, Sundt, & Boppre, in Press). Organizational policies and practices, for example, need to be aligned with new expectations about how probation officers should perform their jobs. Similarly, we need models to ensure that agencies are hiring people into the system with the skills and orientations necessary to be successful (Fixen, Naoom, Blase, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005).

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SPEA’s Evan Lowder effects community change through her research

Posted on December 10, 2018 by Leslie Wells

SPEA postdoctoral research associate Evan Lowder

Sitting in her office on the fourth floor of SPEA, Evan Lowder spends much of her time scanning through spreadsheets and poring over research literature. She’s working to combine the two into analysis she hopes will be used to inform policies and practices throughout Indiana and beyond.

“I think there’s an obligation for researchers to ask how we can advance the state of science and knowledge around these issues to bring that work back into communities,” says Lowder, who earned her doctorate in psychology at North Carolina State University.

Her focus on socially relevant research is what landed Lowder a position as a postdoctoral research associate with SPEA, working primarily with associate professor Brad Ray, who serves as the director for the Center for Health and Justice Research with the IU Public Policy Institute.

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