Hello, readers!

As I write this I am beginning my fifth week of classes. I can't believe we're already one third of the way through the semester! So far I've mainly been focused on keeping up with the reading, but I better start spending some more time thinking about those term papers and projects.

Tonight I am looking forward to visitors from Toyota and CASA of Kenton County (Case Appointed Special Advocates for Children) coming to our Volunteer Management class. We are working with Toyota on the Mayerson Student Philanthropy Project as part of the "indirect giving" model. We will review and evaluate grant applications submitted to Toyota by nonprofits and as a class, we will make funding recommendations to Toyota. The other visitors are part of our service learning two-part project which consists of a volunteer program overview and volunteer management proposal. The class has been divided into small groups by organization preference and there are four different organizations involved: CASA (tonight), Friends of White Water Shaker Village (last week), Future World Productions and Crossover (both next week). I will be working with Crossover, an outreach program of Crossroads Church addressing human trafficking in India. This summer I went to the Freedom Center’s exhibit on modern day slavery and human trafficking and I was so overwhelmed and saddened by this injustice, but I couldn’t even imagine how to get involved. So I am really excited about this opportunity to work with Crossover.

This week in Managing Nonprofit Organizations we're discussing Managing the Governance Function (the board) and up to this point we've covered Managing the Revenue Function (fundraising and budget). In Foundations of Public Administration we're continuing our readings on bureaucracy. Last week I  wrote a praxis and gave a mini-presentation on Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy. Looking ahead, I've been thinking about my research paper for Foundations and I'm leaning toward researching privatizing education. 

Friday night I attended the PASS social event at Hofbrauhaus in Newport. PASS (Public Administration Student Society) is the MPA student organization. Their goal is one social event, one service event, and one guest speaker each semester. It was a great opportunity to talk to classmates and meet other people in the program. I had a really good time and I'm already looking forward to the next event!