September 2025 Faculty Spotlight

Congratulations on your American Political Science Association’s Paul Volcker Junior Scholar Research Award in 2024! Can you tell us about the research that won you this recognition?
Thank you! I was the first-place recipient of this research award, which supports my ongoing field experiment titled “Watching Big Brothers: Can Nonprofit Oversight Mitigate Environmental Injustice?” The study deploys a nationwide email audit sent to municipal officials, including elected officials and department heads of public works, in which I randomly assign two treatments: the first varies the racial identity signaled by the sender’s name, and the second varies whether the message notes that a real nonprofit organization publicly tracks the local community water system’s pollution performance. This design causally tests whether racial bias affects responsiveness in environmental services and whether nonprofit oversight narrows any such gap. The study advances theory by clarifying the role of nonprofits and civil society in environmental management, and it offers practical guidance for citizen-state interactions around service delivery.

Do you have other research projects you could tell us about?
My research broadly address two overarching research questions: 1) Does collaborative governance lead to positive and equitable outcomes in environmental sustainability? 2) If so, how can we motivate governments, diverse communities, and social organizations to collaborate with each other to achieve common goals?

My current work on the first research question focuses on applying design-based causal inference and GIS (Geographic Information System) techniques to explore collaborative outcomes in managing cross-boundary natural resources, including watershed management and clean energy. For example, I combine the spatial raster data [represents geographical information as a grid of cells, where each cell holds a value corresponding to a specific area on Earth’s surface] and a regression discontinuity design [a quasi-experimental method used to establish causal effects by analyzing data points around a sharp cutoff or threshold that determines treatment assignment] to investigate the effects of bottom-up collaborative projects on water quality in Oregon watersheds. This paper is recently accepted at Public Administration Review.

To address the second question, I lead a project called Policy Green, an annual survey experiment series with local government officials and citizens designed to study their motivations for collaboration. Several papers from this project are ongoing or under review. The above “Watching Big Brothers” field experiment is also a side project that emerged from this broader effort.

What courses are you teaching this semester?
I am teaching two courses this semester: the undergraduate course PAF 1250 Citizenship and Public Affairs and the MPA-level course PAF 9120 Public and Nonprofit Management. In both courses, I cover a wide range of topics on how different levels of government interact with civil society.

What got you interested in environmental planning and policy?
Two of the most important women in my life inspired me to study environmental policy: my mom and my wife. My mom is a hydraulic engineer who dedicated her career to water pollution treatment. As I was growing up, she not only gave me a good education in environmental protection but also often reminded me that many environmental challenges are deeply rooted in social problems that engineers alone cannot solve. This inspired me to become a social scientist and study how policy and management can improve the environment. I am also very fortunate to have met my wife, a material scientist and a passionate animal lover. We often discuss how science and policy can work together to manage harmful materials and protect wildlife in the process.