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CPPA Team Recognized in Collaborative Governance Competition

Lucia Miller and Charles Schweik have received an honorable mention in an international competition of case studies and simulations that focus on collaboration in public management.

Lucia Miller (MPPA ’12) and Associate Professor Charles Schweik (environmental conservation and public policy) have received an honorable mention in an international competition of case studies and simulations that focus on collaboration in public management.

The student-teacher duo studied the use in Massachusetts state government of open standards, a topic that has long been of interest to Schweik. They began working together while Miller was in Schweik’s Information Technology class and continued the project after she graduated last spring. Schweik and Miller then submitted their report, titled “The Adoption of Technology Open Standards Policy by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” to the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC) at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

“As a very non-traditional graduate student, I was looking to the MPPA program to backfill my 25-plus years of experience in the nonprofit world,” said Miller, who is the development director in the University of Massachusetts’ College of Humanities and Fine Arts. “When Charlie mentioned his interest in researching and writing a case on the Commonwealth’s open standards policy, I jumped on the opportunity to work with him. I knew that not only would I learn a lot, but also would be teaming up with one of the most innovative IT educators and scholars. It was an honor and a great project.”

The winning peer-reviewed studies in the PARCC competition are made available on the program’s website as a free, online resource for educators around the globe whose teaching focuses on collaborative public management, networks, governance, and/or problem solving.

Schweik has been recognized repeatedly for his cutting-edge approaches to both studying and teaching about open-source technology. Last fall he was named one of 2012’s top 50 innovators in education by the Center for Digital Education. Earlier this month he received an award honoring the legacy of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom for his innovative efforts over the last 15 years to study Internet-based collective action, particularly related to open-source software.