Introduction to the issue

On behalf of the editorial team, our editorial board, and the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, we would like to thank you for reading the latest issue of the Journal of Public Affairs Education. This is a particularly important issue as the journal is turning 25! Such an anniversary is an opportunity to look back over JPAE’s history and contributions to public affairs education along with an opportunity for us as editors-in-chief to discuss the future of JPAE and its next 25 years.

Much has changed since JPAE was founded in 1995, but we feel as though the journal is succeeding in the vision of its founders and early editors to serve as a forum for the scholarship of teaching and learning in public administration. As Jos Raadschelder and colleagues (2019) find, over its 25-year history, JPAE has advanced scholarship in “the areas of diversity and inclusion teaching methodology and the nature of public affairs education.” The work in such areas is a legacy that should make the journal’s authors and editors proud.

In planning the anniversary issue of the journal, we wanted to celebrate not only what the journal has accomplished, but what it can still achieve. Throughout our history, JPAE has been led by some amazing editors, and we wanted to incorporate these editors into the celebration. To accomplish this, we invited all of the past editors to write an editorial for the anniversary issue. For these editorials, we asked the editors to focus on a theme of the history and place of the journal in the field. The editors could then interpret the theme how they best saw fit. In total, five of the editors chose to submit editorials, each of which interpreted the theme in very different ways. Some focused on the content in JPAE, while others explored the future of the journal. One thing that is consistent across the editorials is that they are fun and enlightening views on who we are as a journal. We hope you enjoy these timely editorials on the past and future of public administration education.

To accompany the editorials, we wanted an external look at the journal that reflected on the history of JPAE from impartial eyes. This piece would explore our history as we broached the important issues in the field of public affairs and the scholarship of teaching and learning as it relates to the field. This includes issues such as public service values, dissertation research, and fairness and sexual harassment in the workplace. To meet this high bar, we commissioned Raadschelders and his colleagues (2019) to analyze JPAE’s data over its 25-year history. Although the field has been plagued with a number of issues, the authors find room for improvement in our coverage of these issues. Despite 25 years of publishing, JPAE has mostly covered issues related to diversity, teaching methods, and the nature of public affairs.

Next, we include research from Svara and Baizhanov (2019) that looks at the presence of public service values in NASPAA member programs. This was accomplished with an analysis of the mission statements of public affairs programs. Ultimately, they find that programs can do a better job of integrating values with NASPAA’s five universal competencies. The last research article of the anniversary issue focuses the research being conducted by the newest scholars in the field. In the piece Kope, Miller-Stevens, and Henley (2019) examining gender, methods, and design in public affairs dissertation research. Their in-depth look at the research conducted for doctoral dissertations takes the lead in pushing the field and JPAE forward by focusing on an area that was stressed by the other pieces of this issue; that is, doctoral programs in public affairs.

As a journal dedicated to the scholarship of teaching and learning in public affairs, we always aim to incorporate tools for the classroom or that can help inform our teaching. For this issue, Plagens (2019) provides a case study dealing with issues of sexual harassment, due process, and organizational justice in the Michigan Department of Corrections. In preparing book reviews for the issue, we decided to celebrate the historical viewing of the journal, and we solicited reviews of two seminal books in the field of public administration. The focus of both reviews is the continued relevance of the work to the field. In the first book review, Moldavanova (2019) reviews H. George Frederickson’s classic, The Spirit of Public Administration. The second book review was by Burroughs (2019), who looked at Jeffery Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky’s classic work, Implementation.

Having reached our silver anniversary, we believe that it is time to undergo some self-reflection and plan for the future of the Journal of Public Affairs Education. Thus far, the journal has been focused on a concept that has been interpreted in different ways by the editorial team, NASPAA, and our authors over time. This year, we will be starting a strategic planning process that would create a clear mission for the journal and establish goals that will help guide us in fulfilling that mission. We will be working alongside the editorial board throughout this process. We hope that the editorials found in this issue can help provide some clarity and direction, but we are also open to hearing from our community of authors and readers. Although we do not yet know what the result will look like, we are excited about beginning the process and what it means for the journal over the next 25 years.