FACULTY PROFILES

The e-Government certificate program is offered by the Department of Public Administration within the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. The faculty’s relevant research and field experience has provided them with an in depth understanding of the knowledge and skills needed to provide the most up to date information on e-Government and technological advancements.
 
Learn more about our program director, faculty and instructors.

James R. Thompson
William Max Dieber
Jeffrey Gawel
Karen Mossberger
Eric W. Welch
Yonghong Wu

James R. Thompson Program Director

James Thompson is an associate professor and the head of the UIC Department of Public Administration. Professor James Thompson is interested in issues of organizational change and reform in the public sector. He and Professor Hal Rainey of the University of Georgia are working on a book relating to the transformation of the IRS, 1998-2007. He is also interested in and has done research on human resource management issues in the federal government. He and PhD student Rob Seidner are currently working on a report for the IBM Center for the Business of Government on human resource management reforms in the intelligence community. In 2007 Professor Thompson authored a report entitled "Designing and Implementing Performance-Oriented Payband Systems for Center for the Business of Government". In 2007, the Partnership for Public Service published Professor Thompson's report, "Training Supervisors to be Leaders: The Missing Element in Efforts to Improve Federal Performance." Recent scholarly work has included an article in Public Administration Review entitled, "The Federal Civil Service: The Demise of an Institution" and "Federal Labor-Management Relations Under Bush: Enlightened Management or Quest for Control?" Professor Thompson earned his PhD in public administration from Syracuse University.

William Max Dieber

William Max Dieber is the co-director of the Urban Data Visualization Lab (UDVL) in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago. UDVL's mission is to support faculty and student research with the use of visualization technologies. The Lab has become a campus-wide center of Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis and training. Mr. Dieber is also an adjunct lecturer whose teaching interests include geographic information systems analysis, planning skills, long-range population forecasting and microeconomic analysis for planners. Mr. Dieber is a participant on a 25 member Statewide Advisory Panel on GIS Initiatives and Strategies for the State of Illinois. He also represents UIC in the University Consortium on Geographic Information Science. Prior to coming to the university, Mr. Dieber was director of research for 26 years at the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission.

Jeffrey Gawel

Jeffrey Gawel is the Director of Information Technology at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, a non-profit research and policy center focused upon improving the well-being of children and youth, families, and their communities.Prior to joining Chapin Hall in May 2011, Mr. Gawel served as the Sr. Director of Information and Technology Services at the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority (MPEA), a municipal corporation which owns the McCormick Place convention center and historic Navy Pier in Chicago, Illinois.In that capacity, he oversaw the management of all information technology operations at both facilities. Mr. Gawel has served as Project Manager for MPEA as well as the City of Chicago.

Karen Mossberger

Karen Mossberger is an associate professor of public administration at UIC. She specializes in research and teaching on local government and public policy. Within public policy, her interests include urban policy, information technology and policy diffusion and learning. She is co-author of a new book, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society and Participation (Mossberger, Tolbert and McNeal, MIT Press 2008), which demonstrates the effects of technology disparities on equality of opportunity in the political and economic spheres.

Eric W. Welch

Eric Welch is an associate professor and the director of graduate studies of the UIC Department of Public Administration. He also leads the UIC Science and Technology Research Group. His research focuses on technology processes in public organizations, e-Government and science and technology policy. Professor Welch teaches courses in innovation and technology theory, decision analysis, organization theory, and information technology in UIC’s Master of Public Administration and Public Administration PhD programs. His research has been published in journals such as Policy Sciences, Journal of Public Policy and Management, Political Communication, and Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

Yonghong Wu

Yonghong Wu’s research primarily focuses on the interconnections among public finance, technological innovation and economic development. He is interested in the two important decisions of state and local government finance: fiscal incentives that encourage innovative efforts for economic development, and revenues from new services that are enabled by technological advancement. Dr. Wu has examined the role state government plays to foster economic growth through encouraging business investment in research and development. His article in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management examines how the state research and development tax credits promote additional industrial research and development expenditure in the states.