Faculty Profile for Dr. Patricia M Shields

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Patricia Shields received a BS in Economics from the University of Maryland in 1973. She received a MA in Economics in 1975 and a PhD in Public Administration in 1977 from Ohio State University. At Ohio State she worked with the National Longitudinal Survey data at the Center for Human Resource Research. She began teaching as part of the Master of Public Administration (MPA) Program faculty in the Texas State Political Science Department in 1978. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. She was awarded the rank of University Distinguished Professor in 2020 and Regents' Professor in 2021.

She has taught Public Finance, Public Sector Economics, Introduction to Public Administration, Public Policy, Statistics, and a variety of research methods courses, which included the supervision of the capstone MPA course. Her students have been recognized for their research by national awards, presentations and publications. Dr. Shields received numerous teaching awards including the Leslie Whittington Teaching Award from the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (2002) and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Dr. Shields served as the Director of the Master of Public Administration Program for 18 years and in that time shepherded the program through three re-accreditation cycles. While MPA Director she served on the accrediting body for public administration programs and on the council of the National Association of Public Affairs and Administration.

Dr. Shields publishes widely in areas such as civil-military relations, peace studies, military recruitment, pragmatism and public administration, women in public policy, research methods and public finance. She won the Presidential Seminar Award for research (the top scholar award at Texas State in 1984). Her work appears in many leading journals and on the syllabus of PhD courses in Public Administration. She has edited a top ten journal in Military Studies, Armed Forces & Society since 2001. She received the Janowitz, career achievement award from the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces & Society in 2017.

Her work on pragmatism and public administration and civil-military relations led her to see a connection between the later works of Jane Addams and peace studies. She has published a book Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration and written about her ideas in journal articles in Parameters: The US Army War College Quarterly.

Combining her interest in supervising students engaged in individual level graduate level empirical research and the philosophy of pragmatism as a philosophy of science, Dr. Shields has developed a system for doing empirical research. Her book (co-authored by Dr. Nandhini Rangarajan) A Playbook for Research Methods: Integrating Conceptual Frameworks and Project Management (2013) explains the system and is widely cited. This book combines insights from pragmatism and their experience supervising student research and highlights two tools helpful in doing empirical research. One, the notebook system for writing papers transforms writing a paper into managing a project. Thus, project management or the management of time, materials and ideas is brought to the research process. This helps students stay organized and the organization in turn, provides a setting that encourages reflective thought and creativity. Second, a system of conceptual frameworks, which are paired with distinct research purposes is developed to help student see the horizontal connections of a successful empirical research project. Dr. Shields gives workshops nationally and internationally on these techniques. The American Society for Public Administration highlights her techniques each year at the student summit portion of the national conference.

Teaching Interests

Research Methods
Public Administration Theory and Practice
Professional Ethics
Public Sector Economics

Research Interests

Civil-Military Relations
Public Administration Theory
Peace Research
Pragmatism
Women in Public Policy
Research Methods